My mom is signing my scrapbook which means it’s my last night in Raleigh. In the last two weeks I’ve:
Moved out of my studio in Brooklyn
Driven a U-Haul box truck on the BQE (and nine hours south to Raleigh… but most notable was merging onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway)
Bought a Subaru like all the rest of my car-owning friends
Phase 1: Move out of New York. Phase 2: Buy a car. Now for Phase 3: Drive across the country to a little desert town.
I’m headed to West Virginia tomorrow, just to get a few hours underway, and I feel a lil nervous!! How weird to drive not knowing the place at the end of the road. It’s reminding me of the feeling I had as I rode out to volunteer at a goat farm in Spain this past October.
My friend drove me deeper and deeper into the arid hills of rural Andalusia toward a village even some Spaniards hadn’t heard of. I asked my friend, “Did you ever put a lot of effort into doing something and have no idea what it would actually be like?” As I fearfully watched the arrival time tick down on our navigation, my friend told me of the time he accepted a job in Argentina and moved his life across the ocean. His story of risk didn’t exactly ease my nerves, but it reminded me that I wasn’t the only one to make choices that totally freak me out.
The goat farm ended up being totally beyond awesome, by the way. I milked goats by hand, learned to make cheese and yogurt, harvested tomatoes and almonds, cooked family meals and spoke lots n lots of Spanish; And the experience was hugely influential in my decision to leave New York.
So as I recall the nerves of driving out to the farm, I also remember that the times I’ve felt most nervous tend to result in the experiences I remember most.