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Learning to Fly
The first time you strap a snowboard onto your feet and attempt to navigate your way down a hillside, it’s a deeply disconcerting experience. All of a sudden, the rules change, the way you balance and move is extended along completely different planes; and your feet and knees take on brand new roles.
But heading out to the slopes in late January gave me a weird insight which should have been pretty obvious by now, but somehow wasn’t. I wasn’t a confident teenager at all; shy and gawky, I often chose to let the world pass me by, rather than submit to the risks of engaging with it. But something’s changed over the last few years, and I’ve grown to absolutely love throwing myself headlong into anything which comes along - be it music festivals, snowboarding, shark-wrestling (okay, that one’s a theoretical “todo”) or upping sticks and moving to America.
Which is all a roundabout way of saying something long overdue (the last update here was pitifully long ago, when I was still in London.)
January 2005 was a strange month. Taken up with a lot of very dull “becoming official in the US” administrivia, it was also quite a lonely time. All my friends were in London, and besides a very few people, mostly at work, I didn’t know anyone much in the Bay Area. My social calendar was, shall we say, a little empty. I very clearly remember feeling a little aimless on weekends, driving alone around the South Bay, bewilderedly discovering it and spending too many evenings watching DVDs alone.
Returning “home” after 3 weeks at “home”, the contrast couldn’t have been greater. On my first day back in the office, Jake bounced up to me raving excitedly about the South By Southwest music festival. It sounded great, and took me all of 5 minutes to buy a $525 week-long pass and a return flight to Texas. That trip has just ended (I’m writing this on the hideously-delayed plane into San Jose), and it’s been an absolute blast which I’ll write more about as I sift through the photos this week.
Besides that, the past 2 months have been a ridiculous, life-affirming, heart-warming, grin-expanding muddle of people and places and things.
I’ve moved up to a lovely apartment in San Francisco (the other stream-of-boringness has more on that), been to all sorts of weird parties, felt an unborn baby’s kick for the first time in my life (no, not my baby!), made some new and utterly lovely friends and found myself god knows where at god knows when in the morning. I’ve seriously re-awakened my love for new, exciting, offbeat music, and rekindled my desire to actually learn how to properly play guitar, rather than half-heartedly bashing out the simple chords of “Kumbayah”, “Auld Lang Syne” and whatever other crap that comes in “beginning guitar” self-instruction books.
As if that wasn’t enough, during my weekdays I’ve done some of the best work (in my opinion) that I’ve managed in quite a while.
And, a goal I didn’t have time to complete last year, I’ve taken up snowboarding, heading up to the slopes a couple of times with Chris, Cheryl, Diana and Scott to slide around on snow whilst strapped to a big plank. And I love it more than I thought possible. Going with people more experienced than me has been a real bonus, because I feel compelled to keep up and constantly improve, which I seem to be doing in leaps and bounds. I hope to get up there again very soon.
And in the meantime, the rest of the whirlwind continues. Life really is incredibly good here, tempered only by the fact that there are so many people who I will always miss back in London (and yes, this is an unveiled hint for you bastards to book flights to SFO asap…)
What was daunting 12 months ago is now familiar. What was dormant in me is fiercely alive, and (on-slope or off), I think I’m finally learning to fly.
