New Year’s Eve

A new decade starts – and hopefully a new chapter with positive change…  Steven Covey says “Begin with the end in mind…” and so I will.

This time next year I hope I’m settled back in Maryland where I belong.  I hope to have friends to welcome the new year with and a feeling of “home.”  I hope for a few people I can call to celebrate my joys and to help me face tougher life moments as I will do for them.  My  friend Nancy back in Maryland never fails to make me laugh – a real life Lucille Ball.  I hope we can go sailing this summer.  I’ll be back in the groove of volunteering at Lifeline Dances for people with disabilities, going to Sugarloaf Crafts Fairs, volunteering for Single Volunteers of Baltimore and Annapolis, and walking in DC’s annual Walk for the Homeless and Race for the Cure.   

Through my Minnesota adventure, I’ve lived the single person’s version of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”   My sister called this my “emotional Outward Bound” - and so it was, especially this past year after my transplant friends left.   Never have I ever been so alone – and hopefully never again.

There’s a saying – what we resist persists.  I came here to escape the loneliness of being single in my 40’s.  I hoped to connect with relatives and create a close circle of friends and family.  What I experienced was far more loneliness than I’ve ever had.  Despite countless social networking efforts, my Minnesota experience is a life without friends who share my reality.  I also miss the traditions and patterns of the quilted life I had built on the East Coast that gave me meaning and identity.  So, I’ve had an identity crisis – yes, an emotional outward bound.  Time to wrap up the camping gear and get the heck off this isolated frozen lake!

I hope someday other single transplants read this.  Here’s my best advice:  ”It’s not you – it’s this place – it’s very lonely to be a transplant here – find other transplant friends – and if you don’t succeed and you’re questioning yourself and it’s eating away at your self-confidence and optimism, hightail it out of here asap!  Life is to be lived, not endured.  Go find your tribe!”

And so I will…  Lesson learned!

I welcome in 2010 as hopefully it holds a 1200 mile move back to where I belong.  If I didn’t appreciate the life I had there – single or not – I certainly do now.  It was a wonderful life… 

JTM

As the Year Wraps Up…

Xmas Eve in the Twin Cities – I’ll be staying home with a Netflix tonight.  It’s just as well, with the big snowstorm due to hit. 

As I look back on this year, I’m leaning towards leaving the Twin Cities in the next year or so.  If I’m destined to be single this lifetime, I’d rather have that lifestyle in a place with less than 6 months of winter where I’ll have more opportunity to meet single people my own age.  I’ll probably be heading back to Maryland – about an hour from where I grew up.  I may have been born in Minneapolis, but in terms of openness, emotional expressiveness, bluntness,  and a desire to make new social connections, I’m an Easterner.  I yam what I yam.  I loved moving to Columbus, Ohio in my early 30’s – met a great guy whom I spent 5 years with and some really great people.  But Toto, I’m not 32 and the Twin Cities are not like Columbus, Ohio, excepting the residents’ love for football. 

At the end of the day, we all need to connect with people who somehow share our life reality.  My relatives and many others I’ve met my age here are busy with kids and grandkids, house projects, card club, and the circles of friends they’ve had for 20+ years.  I’m 46, single, and I don’t have even one person I’d consider a close friend here – and it’s not for lack of effort, trust me.  There was not a single person I felt comfortable calling when I had to put my cat of 14 years to sleep.  I’ve adapted to the Minnesotan “don’t burden others” mindset.  So I drove her to the vet’s, watched the procedure and drove home alone.  I needed someone there to see me through that.  That was a huge wake-up call for me and Minnesota.  My well-intentioned neighbor across the hall emailed me to say she wanted to cross the hall to give me a hug but thought it was best to leave me alone in my grief.  That statement really sums up my Minnesota experience.     

So, I’m finding my answers now to whether I should stay or go.  I really wanted things to work here but I’m not enough of an island to make it here, after all.  Where’s Rhoda?  Mary Tyler Moore made it look so easy. 

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

JTM