The Urban Forever

I miss being running around and being genuinely tired at the end of the day.

I've been galavanting around Portland for the second half of the day. I am beginning to re-realize the beauty of the public spaces in large cities.

I originally came in to meet a professor and hangout for a couple of hours. I arrived via transit (MAX Line), departed at the convention center, found him, and off we went, catching up on the past year and a half.

I had attended homecoming the year before, but since then the radar has fallen silent with professors and academia at Wilson. To be fair, I've been off doing my own thing, but catching up, talking about the college, and finally coming to terms that I have left, was very, very helpful.

I found a sort of closure talking to a professor about how the college is changing, and what that means for students, and the way forward. All the big stuff happened right after I left, so this year round', I was fully prepared to hear about all of the new toys and tech the college got. But I simply heard stories of improvements upon the previous awesome things I had seen the homecoming before. It was nice not having the "cool" things continue on like they had the first round.

I'm coming up on my second year. Second year in AmeriCorps; second year out of college; second year in the "real world". I guess the first year was the anti-honeymoon phase for me. I struggled. I really did. Thrown into a life of constant difference and discovery, my mind and body was very overwhelmed. It did a toll too, leaving regrets and thoughts that still need fill to this day.

But now I am going on. I am working into my second year. The area is familiar, the situations have been practiced, and I believe I'm a better person because of it.

Yet, I have discovered and solidified more of an idea of what exactly I want from life. Where I am going to live. What I am going to do. And it is becoming clearer to me that Vancouver is not what I want. I don't know if Portland is either.

But it sure comes closer.

The way I know? Because when I come into Portland for work, play, or study, I always never want to leave. The city is too big. Too beautiful. Too full of things to discover and enjoy. I want to bask in that wonder of the urban forever (or for a longer time than I can), and live in it. To experience it.

But it always turns out to be another Barcelona. Where I go in, I see, I like, I participate, but I never fully get there. There is always a cap. And I am always stuck on that hill at 6 in the morning, longing for more of that city I only barely scraped the surface on.