right now...

I am missing New York in a serious way. Just got back on land off the boat, but we offloaded in Hilo (on the Big Island), so I'm staying in a hotel til I fly back to Honolulu in the morning. The peaceful moment with a room to myself (you have no idea what kind of a luxury that is in my life now) is great, but I was just surfing around on the internet and saw a friend from the city in a magazine spread (he's not normally a model, so it was unexpected). The familiar face and all the time alone in my head conspired to send a fucking tidal wave of homesickness crashing over me.

I'm not the homesick type.

Right now though, I'd kill to be sitting at Nowhere at happy hour eating a chicken and cheese fajita from the Chinese/Mexican place next door or sitting in my underwear on tuesday night at Rbar watching cartoons while Carter makes flavored vodka or to be at one of the boys' apartments watching America's Next Top Model with the crew. Damn. I miss my friends, I miss my haunts, I miss my garden... easy tiger. Let's not get carried away.

This last trip I had my first get-me-the-hell-off-this-boat moment since taking the job. Don't worry, I still love it. I've got some awesome pictures of tapertail ribbon fish and cool critters puked up by lancetfish (which I'll share later). The job I love and I still like Hawaii, but I just had that moment when you know you need a break.

So I'm going to take one. One more trip this go round and I am taking a fucking break. Sort of, if traveling through San Francisco, New York (yay!), Seattle, Portland, Puerto Rico, Montreal, and D.C. in two months with two weddings in the mix is what you consider 'taking a break'.

This is something of the conundrum that my wanderlust has always faced: I really like settling to a place and getting in a routine. I'm a hell of a creature of habit. I like seeing the same folks again and again and doing the same things again and again. Really. But I just couldn't stay happy settled down in one spot, at least not so far. I've never actually really been able to envision myself in any kind of life work that lets me sit in one place. I really can't quite visualize it. That may sound kind of silly, but I mean it. I can imagine myself somewhere for a while, but only with an eye on the horizon. It has sort of always been that way.

Every career or lifestyle I've ever pictured myself in has been one of constant motion, do this here and move on there. As a kid I was always sort of inside my head and pretty awkward at interpersonal interactions. Really fucking awkward, and I seemed to have a knack for making friends with people who always moved away. I'd become best friends with a kid, and then realize that his parents were in the airforce and the next year he'd be gone off to Iceland or Germany or wherever. This isn't some lament about my childhood, because I totally had a great childhood and don't bum about any of that. Like I said, I was an oblivious kid who just kind of did his thing and changes like that didn't strike me as odd or tramatic, I'd just be friends with whoever else showed up. Even though I was staying in the same place, everyone around me seemed to be moving to and fro, and I always knew I wasn't staying there.

The point being, I'm suddenly wondering whether or not this combination of stable environment that I loved but always dreamed of leaving combined with the constant flux of friends and associates is a big part of why I feel the way I do. Maybe this is why keeping on moving feels so comfortable to me while plans for permanence send my circuitry haywire. I'll lay down roots and lay them down deep and fast at it, but I can pick up and move just as easy. It suits me and the way I seem inclined to live, but then I have moments like this where I am just missing my friends. I'm happier with my job and the trajectory it is pointing me on right now than I have ever been, and the what-are-you-doing-with-your-life? moments had been killing me before, but damn I'm miss my life in New York.

I guess it should tell me something that living in the city for not quite 5 years is the longest I've lived in one place since I was 17. Actually, come to think about it, that will probably be the longest I live in one place before I am at least 40 (which suddenly doesn't feel all that far off).

Anyway... enough of you silly homesickness. I'll sleep it off and wake up tomorrow and hit the ground running and smile about it all.