moving right along...

I started this blog to capture my experience of moving back to my husband's homeland... but I could have been writing about moves my whole life. On average I've moved every 18 months of my 37 years of life! Most of which were just cross town moves, but there was a quick succession of out of state moves: CO - OR - CA - WA - ME - an 11 month stop over back in CO - and then back to WA for 14 years until we packed up our lives and begin the journey documented here.

I spend a lot of time talking about moving here when I meet new people... how one ends up in Pittsburgh is always an ice breaker conversation... other then those who never left, there are those who are boomerang Pittsburghers, those who came here for school and never left, those who came for a job, or a spouse... Pittsburgh isn't exactly a destination you just decide to move to and start a new life, although it should be.

But this post is not actually about all my moving - it's about other people and their moving. Because we've now been here long enough that we know people who lived here before us and are moving on; and we've met people who have recently moved to the city after us.

I will say that I can appreciate how my friends and coworkers in Seattle may have felt when I was preparing to move far far away. There really is only one person I was particularly close to in Seattle who moved away while we lived there, and that was also VERY early on in our time there. It is surreal to me that I have lived here long enough to get close enough to people and be sad that they are leaving. Although I will probably be able to see some of them in a few months (they will only be a MegaBus ride away); others are making a transcontinental move and I just don't know when I will be able to see them.

Then there are the people who have just moved here from away. Watching them transition and remembering what it felt like when I first got here I feel some sense of responsibility to share information about good grocery stores, mass transit, fun events. I am pleased that I actually have information to pass along... it reinforces that I am truly home here. It is also nice to be reminded how far I've come since first arriving in Western PA. I don't think I could have imagined then how grounded and happy I would be 2 years from when we first arrived.