what i know to be true.

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The year was 2017. Megan was on her annual trip to Portland. It was probably grey and rainy and cold outside. We’d probably had a late night the evening before. And, if those two things were true, then we definitely didn’t want to do much on whatever day this was written — lounging, watching New Girl, drinking coffee, reading our new books from Powell’s. And, when we’d cycled through all those, we did what any gals born in the early 90s do with a notebook, pen, and some time to kill.

We played a game of MASH.

You remember this game, right? The one where your entire future is determined by the size of a spiral circle your friend draws. The one where the most important pieces of your future are not only the city where you’ll live and the job you’ll have but also — at least in my preteen versions of MASH — the color of the car you’ll drive and the kind of wedding dress you’ll wear. (I went through a looooong, weird phase in middle school where everything was going to be silver. Silver house! Silver car! Silver wedding dress!) From these games, I’ve married countless exes and crushes and celebrities. I’ve been a therapist and a teacher and the winner of American Idol. And I’ve had anywhere from one to seven to 25 dogs and children (but, always, always a dog).

From the start, I knew MASH couldn’t accurately predict my future. I knew it was just a game. I knew that what was written on these pieces of paper wouldn’t come true. It couldn’t! Probably not. And yet, I’d always pin just a little bit of hope or wonder on the every-fifth-answer that got circled. Even as an adult, I’d think, “Well, maybe I could be a Broadway actress. Maybe, in another life, I could meet and marry Ryan Gosling. Maybe I could move to Norway. Or New York City. Or Minneapolis.”

Megan and I have written lots of things in notebooks together over the years — goals, resolutions, diaries of our trips together so we always remember the four hours we spent at an AT&T on New Year’s Eve or the random house party we went to in Arizona. And we’ve played many games of MASH throughout our friendship, too — while waiting at the airport, flying on planes, during sleepovers. So this one game where MASH told me that I’d be moving to the Twin Cities didn’t stick with me. I didn’t have any big revelations once it was circled. I didn’t set my sights on moving to the Cities right at that moment, or make an action plan and move forward with it as soon as the game was done. It was circled (along with the rest of my MASH-decided life plan), and then I moved on.

I’ve wondered about living in the Twin Cities for a while, but those wonderings never turned into anything more than that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever live there, especially after planting myself back in Fargo-Moorhead. But then the world changed this spring, and so did my plans. And so did my ideas of what I thought I would do next, or could do next, or wanted to do next.

So my tentative wonderings about the Twin Cities turned into more serious wonderings. And then those more serious wonderings turned into tentative conversations. And then those tentative conversations turned into something more: “Maybe I can do this.”

But moving is exhausting, job searching is overwhelming, and both of those things feel particularly heightened and hard during this time in the world. Was I really going to do this? Was now the right time to do this? And, even at almost-30 years old, I’ve asked myself too many times: Will other people think this is the right choice? 

I found myself thinking about that word — right — a lot. I’d catch myself wondering if my plans were right or wrong, easily switching into either/or thinking, even though I try to keep my feet planted in the world of both/and. Who’s to say what’s right or wrong for my life, except for me? Through it all, while I’ve been trying to shift away from wondering if what I’m doing is right, I do know one thing.

These wonderings that turned into conversations that turned into, “Okay! I’m doing this?! I’m doing this!” felt good. They felt true. I felt that it was “right,” not in that there was an unlived, opposite, “wrong” choice. But it was right because I felt it deep in my bones, even when I’ve been nervous and scared of the unknown. Even when I know I’m going to miss my mom and dog, my cozy apartment, the life I’ve built and lived in Fargo-Moorhead. Even with all that, this still feels like the truest choice I can make for myself right now.

After I had my first tentative conversation about moving to the Twin Cities with Megan, she pulled out that same notebook and handed me the slip of paper at the top of this post. She’d saved that little square of mine, knowing that one day this circled “Minneapolis” might become more than a MASH answer.

A few weeks later, she mailed me this quote by Cheryl Strayed: “Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.” I wrote this quote, probably five years ago. I sent it to her in a card, while she was in the middle of her own deep figuring-things-out phase. It’s lived on her fridge since then, but made its way back to me. Soon, it’ll find a home in our new place.

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So, I’m moving to the Twin Cities next month. Now, this is more than an answer made by a spiral circle. It’s a deliberate choice I’m making for this next phase of life — on and off paper.

Here’s to this next, true thing in my life. Fargo, I’m not going far — the drive is the perfect distance to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack in its entirety and sit with your feelings for awhile. Come stay with Megan and I in our cutie little duplex once things calm down. All are welcome for a drink on our patio. 

And Twin Cities, hi! I’m so excited to get to know you.

the answer was yes.

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When I flew to Fargo-Moorhead to interview for my job that wasn’t mine at the time, I snuck away to young blood. I had extended my trip past the typical 36-hours-across-the-country-and-back schedule that’s typical in Residence Life to make a long weekend out of it — the “it” not being the interview, but the being home. I was in the *tHicK* of it then: my last term of grad school, my last months in my job, balancing being present for my education and my students’ education, their lives and my own life, while white-knuckling the looming figure-out-a-job-and-geographical-location decision.

So I was home, but I had articles to read and reports to respond to and, beyond that, a deeper question: Could I live here? Could I make this town home again, all on my own? So I went to Young Blood on a Saturday afternoon, just me. Not I-grew-up-in-Fargo me or I-went-to-college-here me, but I-might-move-here-as-a-27-year-old me. I bought a cup of coffee and a refill and perched myself at the window seat. Between sending GIFs of reassurance to my RAs after a hard duty night and underlining a source for my COMPS, I let the question wander around my brain and my heart: Could I live here? Could I find a church and a coffee shop and a community here? Could I make this place home again? I imagined coming to this coffee shop on a different Saturday in a different month, with a different job and responsibilities, maybe to read. or to write or blog, or to make friends with the baristas or smile at a handsome man from across the room (hey, a gal can dream). I imagined having coffee dates with old and new friends, what it might feel like to be a regular somewhere, to belong here.

There’s much more to say but this caption is already long so the answer was yes. Yes, I could. A complicated yes at times, and not to all the questions I asked back then, but still yes. This is home. Where I read and write and have coffee dates, where I order my first cup for here, my refill to go. This photo was taken this morning, looking out that same window.

MOORHEAD

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I was just trying to update my Instagram bio.

“Just moved back to the Fargo-MOORHEAD area.”

I didn’t intend for Moorhead to come out as MOORHEAD. I clicked back to MOORHEAD and tried typing it again, but before I could click the X that stops your phone’s autocorrect suggestion, it changed itself back. MOORHEAD.

And since I read into everything in my life, I started to wonder about MOORHEAD. When had I typed MOORHEAD instead of Moorhead? Why was it defaulting to this all-caps, seems-like-you’re-screaming version of my new city? Why did seeing MOORHEAD make me want to giggle but also burst into tears? It’s like my phone was trying to tell me, “Hello! Why yes, you are in MOORHEAD. Yes, not only in Minnesota, but MOORHEAD! MOORHEAD. You live nowhere else in the world but MOORHEAD.”

When seemingly insignificant things like this happen (again, I was just trying to update my Instagram bio with where I live and a few new emojis) and cause me to pause (I spent about 10 minutes staring at MOORHEAD, before I decided I should sit down and write something about it ), I often take them as signs to look more closely at something. To pay attention, to dig deeper, to search for meaning. I can take a sentence I overhear, or a 30-second conversation with a barista, or a photo of feet amongst leaves and make it into a reflection on my Enneagram type or love life or vocational life -- sometimes all of those, at the same time.

I took my iPhone’s autocorrected capitalization as an invitation. An invitation to think about the fact that I do, in fact, live in Moorhead. Not Portland, Oregon; a location that I chose, that shaped me, that became a defining part of my identity for five years. A location that became home and that, from the very beginning, a location I wanted to shout from the rooftops in capital letters. PORTLAND! I’m moving to PORTLAND! Even before jumping in a U-Haul without cruise control to make the 1500-mile drive, even before arriving at that first apartment, even before walking to the Starbucks down the street to upload that first blog post, I adopted an identity of Moving to Portland. It was part of my family’s Christmas letters to acquaintances. It was my Current City on Facebook. It was a place on a map that transformed into home, that transformed my life.

Now, I’m navigating a whole new set of life circumstances not in Portland. In July, I hopped in my car and drove across the country and now -- I’m living in Moorhead. It’s been a big-yet-calm shake-up over the last six months. And I haven’t written a thing about it, except maybe an Instagram post in August. A lot of life has happened in these six months and I’ve kept some of it at an arm’s length. My excuse has been because this transition is still happening. It’s not like you move to a place and then the adjustment and feelings and challenges are done the moment the last box is unpacked. The complicated mourning and the bittersweet celebrating don’t find their own places in a drawer as your kitchen knives do. The feelings of, “What the hell did I just do?!” don’t leave your heart at the same time you recycle your last cardboard box. A transition is ongoing and constant and very, very present. Even with all the goodness in it, navigating it can be overwhelming. And lonely.

I started this blog when I lived in Portland. I’ve been a scattered writer over the last four-ish years, letting other good things (friends and love and work and school) and not-as-good things (Netflix and depression and doubt and loneliness) get in the way of tending to this space. This space of writing, reflecting, sharing, repeating the process. And yet these posts, though rare, have made me feel more connected; to myself, to my own life, and to others, somehow. They’ve made me feel less alone in the navigation of difficult change and huge hurts, and in the celebration of small wonders and huge awe.

And so, here I am. And here’s a reintroduction of this little space on the Internet -- with a new look, a new location, a new-yet-same author.

I’m going to accept the little invitations that come my way to remember Portland, through texts and songs and middle-of-the-night memories, to think about Portland, to write the countless stories about the life I lived there. And I’m going to listen for the call to think about and reflect on and wrestle with my life now -- right here in MOORHEAD. Because these invitations are everywhere, if we want them to be -- even in our Instagram bios. They’re in conversations with strangers and friends, street signs and radio commercials, all that we see and hear and feel, if we open ourselves to them.

Here’s to accepting the invitations of our lives. Thanks for accompanying me as I open mine.

buy the song.

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I have one song in my iTunes library.

I downloaded it on a late, hot August night, when almost a hundred people crowded into a home just a few blocks away from where I had spent the last four years studying, working, and becoming. Everyone was there to play beer pong, eat chips and salsa and chips and hummus, and have one last reckless summer night before “real life” started again in September. Most of them were there to say goodbye — to me and Steph, as we prepared to drive a UHaul (which was already parked in the driveway, already halfway loaded up with our lives) across the country to start anew in Portland. You know the rest.

I remember a lot of things about that night. I remember sneaking upstairs with one of my best friends and crying over the card she gave me and realizing our friendship would forever be altered the minute I pulled away from our hug and from Fargo. I remember sneaking away from the party to play on the nearby playground and swinging, swinging, swinging like I was in second grade again. I remember the police officer who knocked on the door, telling us that the party was over and one of our guests telling him it most certainly was not. This was my first real house party. It was all so real and all so cliche and I couldn’t stop smiling the entire night even though I was saying goodbye to all of my people. I felt like I was in a really great and really cheesy movie about college and growing up and moving on. I was, in a way. In my own movie. I was, in a way. Growing up and moving on. It was all perfect.

But I also remember this one moment — the one where I paid $1.29 to download a song. That night, my phone played the songs that kept getting interrupted by the people calling and texting, asking for directions. I turned on Spotify radio for most of the night and let BOY, Haim, and a few Top 40 hits flood the first level of the house and spill into the backyard. Somewhere between a few and several beers into the night, a few guys marched up to me with a request.

“Can we play a song?”

“Sure,” I said, as I handed over my case-free and already-cracked iPhone.

What I don’t remember is how they exited my Spotify app, bypassed searching for it on my YouTube app, and instead found it in my iTunes app and determined that this, this was the best way to listen to their song. I do remember someone passing my phone back to me a few minutes later with the “Sign In to iTunes Store” pop-up window right there, so I could authorize the purchase. I remember looking at their eager faces and giggling as I squinted at my screen and shook my head and thought how I’d spent $1.29 on worse things.

Maybe sometimes we make a choice because it will make others really happy. Or because they have kindly asked us. Maybe sometimes we make a choice because we truly, honestly don’t give two shits about the outcome. Or because we’re curious and feeling carefree. Maybe sometimes we make a choice because we think of all the harder choices we’ve made and then this one comes rushing in as a relief, an easy one, a mindless one.

I handed the phone back to them, and they set it up on the speakers, and then — it started.

“Choices,” by George Jones.

I would never have guessed in a trillion years that acoustic, country chords would gush out of my phone just then. I thought it was going to be Space Jam or R. Kelly or Jump Around or something that we all would have been excited about and then danced to or karaoked to or jumped around to. The guys who requested this song were the only people in the room who swayed and sang. (If you listen to it, you’ll realize it’s not really a song to jump around to.) I think I did a few sympathy sways with them and then went to the snack table. The party went on. (Until the cop finally did convince the previously mentioned guest that the party was most certainly over.)

There isn’t really a moral to this story. I plugged my phone into my computer for the first time in a long time tonight, and my iTunes library popped up with George Jones’ face and his dark sunglasses looking off to the left, and I immediately knew I wanted to write about it. It seems insignificant. The guys probably don’t even remember that they are the guys who did this. The others at the party probably won’t even remember this happening. But I do. I remember. And isn’t that a good enough reason for a story?

I could have deleted the song the morning after the party, as I ran through the night in my head and checked my iTunes to make sure I really did download it. I could have deleted it in the UHaul on the drive out here, as I cleared out the old on my phone to make room for the new. I could have deleted it any time in the last two years, as I plugged my phone into my laptop to save the pictures that have captured my life since that night. Instead, I’ve listened to “Choices” on repeat as I’ve written this, not only to make my grandmother proud that I’m listening to “her kind of country music,” but also to remind myself that a choice is just a choice. It’s not the end of the world or the start of our lives, even though it feels like everything in our world and our lives depends on it. We’ve made choices before and we will make them again. We will sometimes make the same choice over and over and over again and we will sometimes choose differently every single time we’re faced with it. Big and little choices, easy and hard choices, choices for others and choices that might make others mad or sad but that finally — finally — free us.

Life has us make choices all the time — sometimes ones that we are prepared for, sometimes ones that we will never be prepared for, and sometimes ones that shake up our souls in awesome and awful ways. Sometimes at the same time.

And sometimes, if we are lucky, life has us make choices that we just have to close our eyes at and throw our heads back at and giggle at as we type in our iCloud password and buy the song.

fargo.

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“Where are you from?”
“Where’s home for you?”
“Where did you grow up?”

A month ago, I hopped on a red-eye flight to my answer for the first time in a year. The last time I was in Fargo, I had been in Portland for a measly four months and was still very much in the honeymoon phase of my new life there (I can bike everywhere, even in December! I live within walking distance of a Whole Foods and a Target! I actually made friends!). I loved that visit to Fargo, but I was still trying to make Portland feel like home. I was eager to return to my half-built life on the West Coast; I didn’t want the honeymoon luster to wear off while I was away. I was worried that if I let myself rebuild things too much—that if I picked up right where I had left off in August—that it’d steal from what I had started to build in Portland. 

Basically, I didn’t believe I could have Portland and Fargo as home; it had to be one or the other.

So Fargo became my hometown, not my home. It became the life I once lived but wasn’t living anymore. I told people in Portland who asked the “Where are you from?” and “Where’s home for you?” questions that while I was from the Midwest, I lived in Portland now; this was home. I reasoned that home couldn’t be a place where I only visited at the holidays. Home was where the real, messy growth happened every day. Home was where I showed up and tried my best or, sometimes, gave up. It was where I walked in the rain and caught the 17 line. It was where I sent hundreds of emails and sat on committees. It was where I met friends for tea and happy hour, where I scrubbed floors and ate standing up at the kitchen counter way more often than sitting down, and where I grappled with questions of faith and vocation and injustice. It was where I felt joyful and peaceful and determined, and also where I felt lonely and confused and stuck. It was where I pictured myself living in a week, a month, a year.

I also wanted to claim Portland as home. I wanted it to be known as the city where I’d be in a week, a month, and a year. I wanted to prove that I had done it, that I had found a place and made it mine, a place that was just as special to me as the place where I had spent the first 22 years of my life. A place that wasn’t just part of the "I-just-graduated-college-and-need-a-wild-adventure-so-I'll-just-move-across-the-country" phase. A place that wasn’t just the next stop in a long line of them. Portland was more than that to me, so I crafted it into a home.

So when I hopped on that red-eye flight a month ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect from my visit. I wasn’t sure how to exist in Fargo while still being true to the home I left out West, the only home where I believed the real, messy growth could happen for me now. But as I got off the plane and slowly immersed myself back into my Fargo life, I started doing what I did in Portland. I put one foot in front of the other each day, opened my eyes each morning, and existed in the world the same way. (Or, at least mostly the same way. I had to drive a lot more because of the, you know,  -35 degree weather and wore more scarves than normal for that same reason.) But just like I did in Portland, I showed up, tried my best, and asked a lot of questions. I let the real, messy growth happen.

I was only in Fargo for two weeks, but I made it home. I allowed myself to find home there. I tossed out this silly idea that I could only have one home, and instead let myself believe that there was enough love and comfort and homeyness to go around in places that are 1500 miles apart. I did more than just show up in Fargo; I grabbed the microphone and took the stage and belted as loud as I could.

I chatted with my 8th grade boyfriend, my junior year fling, and the man I kissed before moving to Portland. In the same night. At the same bar. I was the least helpful member of a trivia team, but was still invited back to play the next week. I disrupted an entire restaurant during dinner because who can contain laughter when talking about high school love?

I sat across from college-year mentors—professors and bosses and advisors, sharing tea or hot chocolate or a meal—who are still mentors, but now, are also friends. I baked sugar cookies from the same recipe, in the same mixing bowl, and with the same kind of sprinkles that my family has used for as many years as I am old. I navigated from one end of town to the other without checking Google Maps, accurately guessed how long it would take get there, and never needed to parallel park. Ever. 

I connected with someone I’ve known from a distance, ate at restaurants that didn’t exist a year ago, and stayed in a new house with a new dog and a new family member. Fargo reminded me of the life I wasn't living full-time anymore, but that didn't mean I had to hold back from life there. Fargo was full of life. Old and new, fun and serious, good and bad. And home is where there is life.

Home is Fargo. And home is Portland. Home is wherever you find it, wherever you are or allow yourself to be in a given moment. Wherever you find yourself surrounded by—or sometimes looking for—love and people and life. Or wherever you find yourself surrounded by—or sometimes running from—challenges and questions and the hard realities of life. Sometimes, home is the place you can’t wait to return to after a vacation, and sometimes it’s the place you can’t wait to leave after a rough patch of life. Home is where you’re from, where you are, and where you’ll be.

Home is Fargo. Home is Portland. Home is where you make it yours.