2,557 Days

On the dark, cold morning of September 1st, 2000, I said goodbye to my mother, sister, and the family dog, and pulled out of my parents’ driveway in Tonawanda, NY at some ungodly hour of the pre-dawn morning. My dad followed behind, driving a rented Ryder truck filled with a lot of stuff that, in retrospect, really didn’t need to make the trip, such as a couch, a recliner, a full kitchen set (plates, cookware, etc), a new bed, a full bedroom set (dresser, desk with bookshelf, night stand...) etc, etc, etc. At that point I wasn’t aware of such things as Craigslist or IKEA. I was driving a Dodge Caravan that my parents had given me earlier that summer since my old car had blown up, and everything I actually needed would have easily fit in there. Neither of us had a cell phone, so instead we borrowed a friend’s walkie-talkie set and checked in with one another every half-hour while on the road.

I’ll spare the boring details of a marathon shot across the heartland, but after three days of fourteen-hour drives, about 2600 miles of interstate highway, several Hotel 6s, and a brief incident with vapor lock in the middle of Illinois, we reached Yakima, WA. September 4th, Labor Day, was a "short" day, with only the drive from Yakima to Seattle left to make. We arrived at about 11 am at the apartment I had found a few weeks earlier when I flew up to scope things out. After unloading everything, dropping off the rental truck and stocking my fridge with a few essentials, I drove my dad to the airport for his flight back and found myself alone in a new city, three time zones and 2750 miles away from almost everyone and everything I knew. If that wasn’t harrowing enough, on the drive back from the airport I witnessed the aftermath of what must have been a nasty accident on I-5, resulting in an SUV flipped upside down and aflame. Welcome to the big city, schoolie.

So, seven years later, where did I go? As I work on completing my thesis I find myself in a not dissimilar situation to where I was 2556 days prior, and yet nearly everything has changed. While I’ve been here, the world has witnessed such horrors as the terrorist attacks in 2001, multiple hurricanes beyond what was perceived as a worst-case scenario, a tsunami, wars, famine and poverty... and even here in Seattle, which has been sheltered from virtually all of that, we had a fairly serious earthquake in early 2001. On the flipside, the nation has seen nearly non-stop economic growth since early 2002, as well. Aside from the earthquake none of these events had an immediate or direct impact on my daily life, although all were obviously profound and paradigm-altering events that influenced nearly everything which came after them, often in subtle ways.

Thinking back on what I’ve done and where I now am, I can see some of these influences peeking through. Gone are most of the items I moved out here with - victims of a dramatic shift in lifestyle when I moved onto a boat for two years (more on that later.) Do I miss them? I don’t think I can even remember half of the stuff anymore, and with the possible exception of some awesome avocado-colored enamel cookware, I don’t even vaguely miss any of it. Gone, too, is the minivan, retired in order to make way for a biodiesel Volkswagen in an effort to "make a difference."

As I look around my current abode, I see the few things that have stayed with me through the years - my music collection (which has grown exponentially thanks to living here), my stereo receiver, my camping gear, my tools, some clothing, some books, my box of photos, my laundry hamper (strangely enough) and a few heirlooms from my family. If someone were to come to the door and tell me I have ten minutes to grab my things before this house was blown up to make way for a freeway bypass, the only things I would absolutely need to grab are my laptop, the box of photos, and a few of the heirlooms. (And yes, I’d also grab the cat, but I haven’t introduced him to the story yet.) Everything else is just stuff, and for the most part easily replaceable (and a lot has been replaced, sometimes several times over.) In the end it’s remarkable just how little you really need to be happy - the rest just fills space and makes walls look less barren, like how nervous laughter fills seemingly awkward pauses in conversation.

So why live on a boat? First, the idea seemed intriguing, and second, the timing was right. My living situation was in upheaval as roommates were moving out left and right (not because of me, but because of job opportunities in other cities and countries) and it was getting to be dubious to find random new people to fill the house. Then, in case I had any second thoughts about doing that, my landlady decided to sell the house and didn’t want to deal with tenants during the sale, so we had no choice but to depart. Around the same time, I had serendipitously stumbled upon a real estate listing for a liveaboard boat, which I amusedly showed to my girlfriend. Little did I know that she had been enamored with living on the water since months before she was even conceived, so we decided to check the vessel out and find out some more about it. That boat was a piece of junk, but the more we thought about the better the concept seemed. The real estate market in Seattle was already crazy when I arrived, and has only become worse since then. In retrospect I should have purchased something in 2000, but who honestly would have predicted that what was a $275,000 house would already be selling for $450,000 just six years later? Of course, we’ll see if they still go for that price next year, but that’s another story. The boat gave us an opportunity to live on the water a mile from downtown, with no taxes, no mortgage, and if you don’t like the neighbors, just lift anchor! Through a series of events I will never pretend to fully understand, the stars aligned - the marina the first boat was in had a slip available two months later (a very rare event) and we were the first to find out about it due to the random chance of being out to view the first boat, and we found a nearly identical boat (selling for less money) to put in the slip. The best I can determine is that we both cashed in a lot of good karma that month.

Boat living was a remarkable experience. It taught us to make do with less, be closer to nature, and think more compactly - the antithesis of modern American living. At the same time, it certainly had its flaws. The boat we ended up with still had numerous problems (as any 30 year old vehicle would) and it needed constant tending to. Maintenance and repairs were difficult while we were living aboard, but we didn’t consider that before moving on and by then it was too late to do it differently. Winters weren’t the most enjoyable time to be on there, since we were restricted to 30 amperes of electricity and portable electric heaters use about 12 amps each, so we were lucky to keep the temperature above 65. Add to that the constant dampness of being on the water and occasional drips and leaks, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a long, miserable season. To make matters worse, any time the temperature fell below freezing (thankfully not often out here) we had to turn off the water supply since the hose would otherwise freeze. We lived on the boat for about nineteen months, finally calling it quits in the middle of a snowstorm at the end of November 2006 - the rainiest month ever recorded in Seattle. Although the relationship continued for quite a while after we left the boat, looking back it was clear that things weren’t working and the boat played a large role in getting to that point. Mind you, I don’t blame living aboard for ruining the relationship - I view the time aboard as a volume dial, amplifying the small uncorrected stresses and fractures in the foundation. Would I do it again? Probably not - at least not on a boat like that. However, I have no regrets - it gave both of us unique experiences, memories and stories that have enriched who we are.

I find myself sobbing uncontrollably tonight for the first time since my Uncle Tom’s unexpected funeral in 2002. I barely shed a tear for either of my grandfathers, because in both cases we had already said our emotional goodbyes, and the final physical moment was well after the final emotional moment. In the case of my Grandfather Voght, those moments were separated by years. I miss them all dearly, but there’s something about proper closure that makes final parting ache in a much less visceral way. During a rough patch this spring in my most recent relationship, we had a long discussion where a lot of powerful emotions that had been lurking under the surface came out. It was intense, but it wasn’t really anything unexpected. On a purely physical level, I was ill and quite shaken, but I found myself almost entirely unable to cry. This was a bone of contention, where it seemed I was playing the role of the "tough guy" and not exposing my emotions. Now, however, as I think back both on that episode and on our recent breakup, I see a pattern. In that case, too, I found myself physically shaken and ill, but again barely able to muster a tear, though certainly not for lack of emotion. Initially, I compared this to another long term relationship I had, where I was unexpectedly and unceremoniously dumped ninety miles from home. Then I had sobbed in my car for a good hour. Had I become bitter and jaded over the years and forgotten how to express emotion? I was seriously worried about this until I gave it some more thought. In the current case, the relationship had said its emotional goodbye long before, and it was only through sheer physical strength (and some emotional sacrifice) that it remained together. In this case, the tears were borne not so much out of sadness at the death of the relationship, but out of the anguish that came from trying to keep it alive for so long in a form that it didn’t want to remain in. Could things have been different? As is said, "if you love something, set it free." In the end we’ll both be stronger people for having gone through it, and no one knows what the future holds, or why things end up working in the ways that they do. And, somehow out of it all I ended up with a cat.

Anyway, back to the tears. As I sit in this house finishing what I originally came to Seattle to do, the quiet moments in between the planes, trains, raccoons, sirens and dogs give me time to reflect. I find myself essentially where I was back in September of 2000, facing a lot of uncertainty and a few potentially big decisions. There are only rare moments in our lives where decisions really affect the large-scale pattern of our life. It’s often not until long after they’re made that we realize just how profound they were, but right now there could be several approaching me at the same time.

The most basic (and probably least consequential) is housing - my current lease is up at the end of November, and I’ve already made the decision to move. First, the house is both too large and too expensive for one semi-transient person and a cat. Second, the downstairs neighbor is annoying. Third, I’ve come to dislike the neighborhood. Queen Anne is a beautiful area, and I’ve got an unrivaled view of the Olympic Mountains from my back deck, but everyone is too pretentious, the commercial district is a collection of overpriced uppity boutiques and cafes, and it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere else easily from here.

Somewhat more significant is finding a job. At this point in my life, I’m now over-qualified and under-skilled to do almost anything. Laboratory research burned me out a few years ago, nearly to the point of hanging up the lab coat. If not for the fact that I had already committed so much time to this endeavor and realized I was close to the end, I probably would have quit back in 2005. I’m now faced with a dilemma - do I take the easy path and continue in research, do I try to find something science related away from the bench, or do I write off the last seven years as a learning experience and do something entirely different? Even this decision is not as profound as it seems at first, since in this day and age jobs are not what they once were, and a few people I know who left science for a while - one to become an animal shelter coordinator, one to tour with a rock band - eventually returned to it. Alternately, plenty of people who kept on for a little while longer in science ultimately left it.

The most important decision, and the one that brought my emotional episode, relates to both of the above, but in a more meta way. At this moment in time, I have nothing requiring me to stay in Seattle past the end of this lease. My thesis will be completed by then, and If I wanted to, I could pack up the few things I really want to keep (see previous), sell or donate all the other crap, toss the cat in the car, and head anywhere. Aside from the constant yowling that would ensue from the passenger seat, there’s something quite attractive about having this freedom.

My mom has been applying subtle pressure trying to convince me to return to the northeast, and about week ago I started giving that serious consideration. Most of my family and a fair number of friends remain in Western New York, so there’s a ready and waiting social network for me to return to. Science jobs are a different question, but there are a few promising institutions just getting started in the region, and not a lot of brains yet to fill them. Further, the housing market out there never got caught up in the absurd boom that a lot of coastal cities saw, so there are a lot of nice options available as far as both buying and renting go.

Conversely, here in Seattle things are nearly the polar opposite. There are a lot of options as far as science research goes, but also exponentially more people competing for those positions. I arrived out here with absolutely no support system and slowly developed one by way of classmates and lab mates, but also watched most of it slowly disappear again as they moved on. The housing market here has yet to suffer in the recent downturn - 800 square foot cottages still sell for upwards of a half million dollars. Given all of this, it should be an easy decision, right?

When I sat down tonight to do some math for the purposes of titling this entry, I came to another realization: I’ve spent nearly two-thirds of my adult life here, and the entirety of my "adult" time in Western New York was spent in college in Niagara Falls, or working summers in between.

So the question is, have I sufficiently experienced Seattle, and has Seattle sufficiently experienced me? I’ve lived in four neighborhoods (and sort-of in a fifth), driven well over 40,000 miles around the region, been to most of the parks, and seen the sights and events. What is it that gives me pause and pulls at me? Is it, as the giant poster for the MS Foundation asks, "something in the water?" There just seems to be no place quite like Seattle, and it has had a significant impact on me. As I mentioned earlier, I now drive a biodiesel Volkswagen Golf, and there are nearly a dozen places I can easily fill up within a ten mile radius, and more stations coming soon. The closest biodiesel station to Buffalo is a truck stop in Oneonta. Most of my new music comes due to me hearing it played on KEXP, the local commercial-free independent radio station (and one of the few in the nation.) I could always stream the station online no matter where I end up, and a lot of people do that, but half of the experience is being here witnessing the bands performing for the first time in front of huge audiences that actually know and appreciate them due to the support and airplay KEXP provides. I shudder to look back at what I was listening to in the summer of 2000 - there were a few gems, but for the most part it was steamers. Similarly, I can drive any direction from here and within five minutes find a good independent record store to purchase music from that artist. Most places, there are virtually no choices but chain stores to buy CDs at, and those that are around (Target, Best Buy) only carry a small selection of meticulously marketed crap - and they certainly don’t make or break their bottom line by selling it! Similarly, I can drive any direction and within five minutes be at an excellent Thai, Indian or sushi place. Odds are in doing so I didn’t see a single chain restaurant or store. Since I’ve been here, I’ve witnessed three McDonalds and two Burger Kings close shop and not reopen elsewhere. On my first day here, my first meal in Greater Seattle was at the McDonalds in North Bend, and I don’t think I’ve returned since. There’s something remarkable about a city that actively eschews such big chain establishments (though strangely they do actively support Starbucks and Jack In The Box). On the same theme of driving any direction, I can drive any direction and within an hour be at a beach, in the woods, or in the mountains - often at the same time! I still have a big book of regional hikes that I’ve barely cracked open since purchasing. In the end, I wonder if the past tense "experienced" is really a fair substitute for the present progressive "experiencing".

Of course, there’s something noble about being among the first to fight for a shift in philosophy. I think about all the people who had to take big risks in cities like Cleveland and Seattle back when they were fated to rust away. Someone had to step up, push for change, and support it even though the results weren’t going to be immediate. It takes a long time for a population to embrace something new and shift their way of thinking, and it takes a long time for people to see that what you’re pushing for just might work, and for them to join you in fighting for it.

I guess it comes down to this - do I go back to the place that nurtured me when I was young and try to be an island of green fighting for change in a sea of rust, do I stay in the green place that nurtures me now, or do I just throw a dart at the map and drive?