“For one month in 2002, I let the brakes off and let life roll downhill without caring…”
That quote is from Spencer Hall in a piece he wrote about becoming a fan of US soccer and how his life has paralleled their success and failure. He is a spectacular writer, and that piece is his best work. I cannot suggest it strongly enough.
Out of context, though, it makes me think of my first month in Chicago. I moved in September of 2010 with a U-Haul, a lawyer who had no plans to practice law, and my Corolla packed to the brim. I called the car Clementine after the female lead in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the beautiful Elliott Smith song. I sold her to a good friend, but in that moment we were very close.
I drove my car and the lawyer drove a truck that contained everything we'd ever owned. We made it through St. Louis, rush hour in Chicago, and to the farthest north you can go and still be technically in the Second City. We unpacked and slept on a couch and a barely made bed and I can tell you right now that I don't think we'd ever been happier.
I remember the Steak 'n Shake, the ordeal of trying to find our way around to park at midnight in a new city, and the wonder in our eyes at the liquor section in Walmart. We'd lived most of our combined lives in the South; you can't buy booze at Walmart there.
He drank tallboys of Budweiser and I drank Early Times whiskey and water and we watched college football and wasted 30 straight days. Neither of us got too serious about any kind of job hunt.
I have a friend who once said, upon being fired from a tech company in his mid 20s, that he was "retired." The darkness of that joke did not hit me until much later.
In those days I had a birthday, his team (the Tennessee Volunteers) had the definition of an "up and down" year, and we learned to love the Rogers Park bar scene.
I can only speak for myself, but I will include him generally to say that we were running away. There is a danger to staying in the city you were born in. The perk is that you know everything and everyone. The danger is that you may never find yourself.
He found himself as a military man, and is in the deepest darkness of Texas studying to be King of Planes, or something. It's unclear to me.
I found myself in many ways over the first few years of my time in Chicago. It's an ongoing process and it should be, but so far so good.
There is something to be said, though, for 30 days of Chinese food, take out pizza, and gut-rot. If it doesn't help you find anything, it at the very least will show you what you've lost.
