I’m sitting in a restaurant the size of a one car garage waiting for my dinner before I have to go lead a private ghost tour through Portland’s old red light district.
We went to a wedding last night, and camped out afterwards. It wasn’t as hot and sweaty as I worried it would be, but it was still hot and sweaty enough to be completely exhausting. Not that I slept. Everyone agreed, it was a beautiful ceremony, heat not withstanding. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever regret not doing the wedding thing. Not that we can’t change our minds and do it anyway, I suppose. But what if we get crushed by an asteroid tomorrow and as it’s melting off our faces, all I can think is “I wish I’d spent money we don’t have on something we’ve never personally expressed interest in.”
Okay, you’re right. When I put it that way it sounds silly.
I just came from a business meeting in The Pearl, which is basically Portland’s answer to Santa Monica. I think.
The rent is crazy high, everything looks adorable, it’s impossible to drive or park in (Oregon impossible means LA suburban mom level of patience and skill required), filled with people who think they’re creatives, but are actually managers, and everybody has a Prius, but half of those have dreds or some other outsider look going on.
I don’t talk a lot about my day to day life anymore because not a lot seems to happen to me. I stay in house and work until I crack under the pressure, then I come crying to the blog about how haaarrrd it is after which I go to bed, get up in the morning and do it all over again.
I started leading this red light district ghost tour in order to make a connection to my new city, and it definitely has accomplished that. I feel more ownership over Portland for sure. I also have a lot of fun. Some days I show up to the tour totally bummed out and it completely lifts my spirits. Here I spend all day trying to convince people to listen to me when I can just show up and 20 or more people have paid for the privilege.
I do still feel lonely here. As cool as everyone seems to be, it’s not a the same as my people in LA who’ve known me for years. I sometimes feel very much out of place. People are, in general, crazy friendly. Which is what I wanted, but it’s one thing to want a friendly city, it’s quite another to have a random dude in a truck ask you what neighborhood you live in and whether or not you like it there while trying to get directions to a golf course in the middle of a gas station parking lot an hour outside the city.
In two weeks, it’ll be 6 months since we left LA. I still feel very much that this is where I belong, and I’m much happier here than I was there. I just wish I didn’t have to move so far away from all my friends to live somewhere awesome.
