Neil Christensen

Leaving SLC

When my little sister Liz moved to New York City last August I gave her a journal, because as I told her, “you’re going to have an adventure every day as you explore your new home.” For the next 10 months I could only imagine whether or not I was correct. But I no longer have to imagine.

On June 15, 2009, I started an adventure of my own by moving from the relatively small Salt Lake City, to the much larger San Francisco. I had been preparing for a move of this magnitude all my life and it was a big step for me to take. But I jumped right in.

Packing all of my worldly possessions into a moving truck and towing my vehicle behind on a flatbed trailer was one of the scariest things I had ever done. Not only because I was moving to another state, but because I was doing all of this by myself. It felt like going away to college all over again.

That Monday, I drove 11.5 hours, leaving the state of Utah, crossing the entire state of Nevada, and finally arriving at 12:30 am at my friend, Caleb’s house in Sacramento, where I would store most of my stuff while I found a permanent apartment in San Francisco.

The following day as Caleb and I unpacked my truck and moved my stuff into his garage I had a strange feeling of being homeless.

After staying with Caleb and his wife on Tuesday, I packed what few objects I needed into my car on Wednesday. Basically, these items amounted to a bunch of clothes, both for work, play and exercise, a portable pull-up bar, a kettle bell, and of course, one of my bicycles.

I then began the final leg of my journey to my new home.

For living quarters, I had arranged with a man to rent a room by the week in his hotel. It was newly remodeled and I was the first person to sleep in my bed, which was great, albeit loud. Fell Street is a major one-way street in San Francisco and it was right outside my window. More than once I awoke in the middle of the night scared shitless because I thought I was experiencing my first earthquake, only to realize that it was just a big truck lumbering up the hill of Fell approaching Fillmore.

The next few days were spent exploring the city, both by bike and by foot. I saw and interviewed for several apartments before I finally found the place, location, and roommates I liked and vice versa. I was even able to going on a 50+ mile bike ride through Marin County.

As of tomorrow I’ve been in San Francisco exactly three weeks. I’ve had some amazing conversations and experiences so far. Being in my new city I’m surprised at how emotional I’m getting about such small incidents. But I realize that I’m stricken by them not because of the episodes themselves, but at their regularity. On almost a daily basis something humbles me and makes me take note.

So, this is my first step at documenting these stories that occur in my new city and state. I’m really excited to share some of my experiences and as I told Liz almost one year ago, “everyday is a new adventure!”

Rule #2

Having no expectations of somebody is a great way to protect yourself from disappointment. It’s also a great way to never be rewarded.

The girl I’m dating is really not ready for a “serious” relationship, so we try to keep things as simple and basic as possible. We try to simply keep things “fun” and not get too worked up over what we are doing or our status.

This system is working great for her, it’s slowly eating away at me. I mean, why have a relationship with somebody if you don’t really “connect” with them on a deep level. What we have seems very primitive. But I guess that’s the point of the “system,” right?

I get very frustrated sometimes when I express something I consider a sweet comment and she doesn’t show any appreciation for it. I have to remind myself of rule #2 of our system where we have no expectations of each other. It helps, well, until the next time it happens.

I’m going to keep going with this for awhile. I’m hoping the relationship eventually evolves naturally into what I think it should be, into what I want it to be. But if it doesn’t I need to be prepared to end it for my own well-being, no matter how much I care about her and like who she is.

Re-blogging

jakelodwick:

Nature produced one form of evolution (biological life) which produced a species (Homo sapiens) whose organisms possess the ability to evolve within their own lifetimes (!).

A human which never subtracts anything — which never lets go of certain convictions or ceases certain behaviors — cannot evolve. It gets ‘clogged up’ and stuck, unable to adapt. As its environment changes, it remains the same, executing the same directives and steadily losing the ability to be happy, like a toy robot trying to walk through a wall.

When the human finds itself deeply unhappy, a good strategy is to remove as many elements from its life as possible — to ‘take it easy for a while’. This reduction of activity lowers the overall noise levels of the nervous system, so it’s easier to ‘hear oneself think’. The calm brain can now spend its precious calories on analysis of its own operation, instead of on outward-facing behavior and the feedback it produces. A near-silent nervous system will eventually discover forgotten truths and strangled emotions which had been buried under the chaos.

If the mind welcomes these elements into its awareness — if it chooses to allow them into consciousness — the resulting integration will produce a more complete and correct model of itself. The organism’s understanding of the organism will have evolved, at the cost of a little temporary discomfort. Its range of potential behavior will have expanded, because it can now choose to do (or not do) the things it was previously doing automatically. In terms of self, consciousness is freedom. A human which never accepts its own fears, will never face them.

The organism writing these words spent a stretch of many months taking naps and baths, writing, and quietly working, watching movies, and traveling. It embraced every frightening truth about itself, shedding reams of psychic debris. It spend hours crying and unwinding, collapsing into pillows, talking to itself. It is now ready for another phase of existence, one with a renewed clarity and purpose, standing somewhere inside a universe, feeling not fear but love.

Jakob Lodwick stopped blogging; Jake Lodwick just started.

I really like this. I’ve done this several times in my life after traumatic or life-changing experiences and I’ve never known the words to describe what I was doing or really, why I was doing it. I just went into self-preservation mode. Thanks Jakob. Beautiful return to blogging.