The End of the Beginning

Well, I made it! After 322 days, 10 countries, and more experiences that I know how to categorize, I have returned to Santa Barbara where it all began last September. Last night I visited with Rickey, a family friend of long-standing notoriety, and she had this to say about returning from foreign travel: "You won't know for a long time just what you learned. It'll come back to you at random times, when you see something or smell something or hear something that makes you think, 'That reminds me of...'". She's a woman of great wisdom and insight, so I'm more than happy to hear from her that there's no rush for me to digest this trip. That being said, it feels appropriate to talk about what it's like being back where I started, and addressing the "What now?" question.
Santa Barbara is amazing. It wouldn't surprise me if a whole lot of people saw fit to call this place heaven on Earth. Sandwiched between speckled gold chapparal mountains and the surging blue Santa Barbara Channel, the city couldn't be situated any better. The vibrant downtown area is made up of brilliant white plastered buildings with red-tiled roofs, a tribute to its rich Spanish history. And then there's the weather! The most common complaint I've heard over the years is that it's too often too sunny. Seriously, by the end of summer people are clamoring over how many days in a row have been nearly identical: cool fog in the morning, bright and sunny all day (with temperatures ranging from, say, 25-35 degrees Celsius), then cool and clear at night. Repeat week after week. So yeah, Santa Barbara is wonderful, and a whole lot of people go out of their way to make a point of coming here. It therefore comes as something of a surprise to me that I want to leave.
I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have grown up here, but it's just not the place for me anymore. Coming back is sort of like digging out an old pair of shoes from the back of the closet and pulling them on again. They're well broken in, but there was a reason they got put in the back: the fits not right. In the same sense, I've covered a lot of ground and time in Santa Barbara, but there was a reason I left. The first time was to university in northern California, the second time was to Australia in 2003 as an exchange student, and the third time...well that's what's been chronicled in this website over the last 11 months.
I had an epiphany of sorts while stacking firewood at my father's house just last week. Each piece of split wood can go in any of a number of different places, and fit well enough. However, it always seems to me that, if you take the time to look, there's always a spot where the piece fits almost perfectly. It's almost like it was made for that one particular spot, even though there are countless other places that work well enough. Maybe it's the same for people. Maybe all the places I've lived - Santa Barbara, Arcata, Eureka, Frelighsburg, Geelong, Cairns - are all places where I fit well enough, but not perfectly. I mean, I've had it pretty good everywhere I've been. I've never gone to bed hungry, never felt afraid to go out my door, and never had to worry about being safe inside of it. Nevertheless, I've always felt like there was somewhere better for me. The closest I think I ever came to really feeling at home was in Australia. But who knows? Maybe there's an even better place for me. Wherever it is, and whatever it takes to get there, I intend to keep looking. The vast majority of people in the world aren't afforded the luxury of choice in either lifestyle or location. While I once considered it to be an act of greed and selfishness to want more when so many have less than I do, I now feel like it would be foolish not to take advantage of the opportunities available to me. This journal doesn't mark the end of the journey, but rather the end of the beginning. The path from here is not clearly marked and I don't expect expect it to be straight, but I am confident that in the end I'll find the perfect place to fit in.