On September 2 2003 I moved from a city of 4,682,897 people to a city of 116,152.

I was born and raised my entire life in the right ventricle of the heart of downtown, 4,682,897 (except for a year, when I was in high school my family temporarily moved to a city of 7,172,000). When I went away to art school it was to a city of 582,045 and by comparison that seemed small already. My whole life has been urban centric. I did travel to many smaller communities and spend many summers at cottages in small towns, but I had never belonged to a small city community, as a full-time resident like this. This 116,152, no one prepared me for this.

Granted, it is compounded also by the fact that after years of living independently I have moved back into my parent’s home, (they too have moved from 4,682,897 to 116,152). That sort of triggered the entire dimension I currently inhabit. My mom works for the university here in 116,152 and having graduated from my artist phase I am now rebirthing myself in sociology (in hopes to satisfy the artist in me). I think it is safe to say I am experiencing mild bouts of depression due to culture shock, but at least I can identify it.

The move here happened so fast. I didn’t even realize I was euphoniously making decisions that would be so bittersweet after. When I think of the details, life here is not really so horrible. It’s just in comparison to my life in 4,682,897, this is totally different. I used to work for an art publishing company, then I went solo and tried just “doing art” but that didn’t really work because I cannot just paint nice pretty pictures and be fulfilled. I ended up sedating my artistic discomfort with social activities, which for me were plenty in a city of 4,682,897. I would wake up, call a friend for brunch or coffee, spend all day at my computer, on instant messenger, take my dog to the park, ride my bicycle to some friend’s studio while pondering what next financial art project was going to afford me my luxuries to which I had grown attached while lamenting over my lack of artistic genius, arriving at my friend’s just in time for me to “snap out of it” and go out for sushi (or whatever) and wash it all away with drinks at some art scene event. This beautiful, but ever so moronic lifestyle went on for at least 3-4 years; I don’t know they all blend together now.

There is no sushi in 116,152. There are no cute brunch places. I don’t have a circle of close friends who are always home doing web design or fashion design or art or whatever creative spice. There isn’t the problem of what art opening, or magazine launch, or party I’m going to attend tonight. There is bicycle riding, but it’s down highways and over passes and squished between logging flatbeds and slaughter trucks. Even at it’s best (and I’m an optimist) it is a long way away from my bucolic ideal. That being said, it is with reluctant honesty that I admit I am in some perverse fashion benefiting from this torture. I am not using the word torture lightly. I cried myself to sleep for weeks in the beginning, because I was trying to fit in a skin that I didn't want to admit I had out grown. 116,152 has taught me that so far. I no longer perfectly fit into my old definition of self. After my first month here I looked up and literally saw the biggest sky in my life and with that my consciousness expanded beyond anything found in my art over the past 3 years.

I am relearning how to socialize and socially contextualize things that I took for granted. For instance being “understood” or at least humored, which I am discovering shares a unique relationship with anonymity. There are no veils in 116,152 to wear, which is interesting because I always considered myself a very honest and open person. Here though in the thick of 116,152 I am forced to stand out in ways I am unaccustomed. I remind myself that part of a masterpiece is the defending of it. I miss my family though, I mean my family of like-minds who nurture differences and don’t judge, the people who allow you the freedom to create and invent yourself and grow without even personally knowing you but through their own ambition. But I am finding families in the last remnants of nature still left here, a few hundred thousand people and a couple sushi restaurants shy of everything I knew before.

One day when I return to 4,682,897 (which I will), I shall have many stories to tell and again a new skin to wear that will dress my art to share.