January 6

"Sometimes I wish I could just get up and go." How many times have we heard this or said it ourselves? "I just want to drop everything and move to a new city. I'll make new friends and just start over." Not many people do it and they always wonder what would have been. I, on the other hand, did it three months ago and I'm really starting to regret my decision.

On December 26, 2008, I received an email offering me a position as video scout intern with a baseball statistics company located on the other side of the country. At the time, I was waiting tables and I was miserable. I thought a career in the baseball industry was what I wanted, so I put everything I had in storage and drove across the country to watch baseball every day for the 2009 season.

I had the time of my life this past summer, but I also realized that it wasn't necessarily the direction in life that I wanted to take. Some would look at this recognition as a good thing. I suppose now I could turn my attention in a new direction, but baseball was the only thing that I thought I wanted to do. Now I was back to square one without a clue as to what to do.

The internship was over, all of my belongings were in storage and I had the freedom to go wherever I wanted. I chose Austin, Texas. Why Austin? I didn't know anyone there and I had never even been there! The only reason that the idea of Austin arose in my mind was because I had heard on a radio program a while back that it was one of the best places in the country to live if you were single. "Great," I thought. "I'm single, getting older, and I would love to meet someone. What better place than Austin?"

The problem was that I'm not very good at being single. Even though I've been single for twenty-four of my twenty-six years of living, I really suck at it. I'm not the type of person to go out and just hook up with girls. I can't even approach a girl when I'm out because all I can think of is how unoriginal it would be for me to talk to her. That's what guys do. They approach women they are interested in and girls know it. I can't imagine how my approach would be any better than the last guy's, so I rarely do it.

Now I'm in Austin and I'm waiting tables. I'm doing the same thing I could be doing in California where I have friends and family. I've met a few people while here, but it's not the same. It just feels temporary. I'm from California. A part of me keeps telling me that anyone I meet here is just someone that I will be saying goodbye to down the line which is a depressing and lonely thought in itself.

Today is my dad's birthday and he and my mom are in the mountains with my dog. This is a trip that we've gone on every January for as long as I can remember and it's one more tradition that I've had to throw away in the last year because of my absence.

I congratulate and applaud anyone with the bravery to go to a new city on a whim. It's a risk that not many people ever take. It was exciting for me to go through with it, but I'm too close with my family to have done it. I need to see my parents, my sister, and even my dog more than once a year.