Sunday Scribblings: Country vs. city

I spent most of today sleeping, when I should have been revising the stories I need to hand in in preparation for my MFA residency at the end of the month. I don't know if it's allergies or what, but I've had a huge headache since I woke up. (Hence all the sleeping). Anyway, I decided that in this break between naps, I'd multitask--doing both the Sunday Scribbling and some character development work. Here's one of my character's, Janine's, take on city vs. country. For other scribblings on the topic, click here.

I've lived in the country and the city, and everywhere in between. From Paris to Manhattan to upstate New York, I've called lots of places home. I don't think my soul was meant to stay put. And I don't think I have a favorite type of setting, either. Sometimes I need the craziness of the city, sometimes the calmness of the country.

But what I do need is a better sense of what I'm doing with my life. For the past 15 years or so, I've let random people and events push me from one place/job/life to another. A boyfriend wants to move to Paris? I went. A friend has an extra room in Barcelona? I was there in two weeks time.

I've liked these adventures, and I've learned a lot about the world. But for some reason I haven't learned enough about my own needs. (That reason has a lot to do with the fact that I learned to suppress them as a child, after my mom died and I didn't want to make my dad's life hard.) But now, my father has died too, and I'm an orphan at 38. I have no parents, no husband, no kids, and only a few friends scattered across the globe.

The only errand I have left involving my father's estate is transporting his bee collection to Delaware (from his house in upstate NY). After that's done, I can go back to Manhattan and... I don't know what. How does one go about figuring out what they want? Or, more pressingly, how does one figure out how to figure out what one wants?