Every once in awhile I get an itch to move somewhere super hip. I rarely feel this way because I like our little life here in Jax. But whenever I visit Christa in SF it makes me want to pick up and move there. And visiting SA in Ann Arbor made me want to be in a more hip, college town. But then I come home and sit on our backporch with P and look out at our little park and think about all our friends who are just a few blocks away, and my parents just a few hours over and it reminds me of how homey and comfortable we are here.
Today one of our friends was complaining about Jacksonville and how lame it is and how if she moves away for a few years to take a new job that she can always come back "and everyone will be doing the same thing." This person isn't married, no kids and is still very much searching. I don't think she meant for it to sound harsh, but it sorta was. It made me think about how everyone is always searching for that super cool, different, hip road in life. We all have to have this wild, great story about what we do (cheese buyer for Whole Foods [my pick for awesome job], event planner in NYC, clothing designer) and all the places we've gone and the outrageous plans we have for the next year. There are all these destinations (Colorado, California, NYC,etc) that are the cool places to be and life will be so much more hip, rich, awesome if only we lived there. (Side note: I remember that when I was graduating from AU how everyone said they were moving to Colorado after graduation. It was totally the popular thing to do and when asked what their plans were after graduation, like 9 out of 10 people would say they were moving to Colorado. I don't think even half of them actually did.)
What's so wrong with being happy and content in our sweet house, taking walks around the neighborhood, setting down roots so that we have friends who love and rely on us, getting involved in our neighborhood, being thankful that we can afford to own a little piece of earth? I don't want to sound like a fun hater, and there's nothing wrong with dreaming big and doing fanastic stuff - I definitely have lots of fanastic stuff I plan on doing - but what's so bad with being happy and content with a simple, happy life?

And to be totally honest with myself, perhaps I'm just writing this to remind myself of all of this.