You know Amber dear, I know you're reading this, and so I'm going to wax autobiographical for a moment, as I, franksolich, have in the past pretty much done what you just did, and more than once.
When I graduated from college, I moved from Nebraska to Pennsylvania, with very little money and no job waiting for me. I had a good job in Nebraska, but wanted more so than a job, to live in Pennsylvania.
I was young and green in judgement; my family was from that state, but I was born and raised in Nebraska, and despite that my family loved Nebraska so much they insisted upon being buried here, all of them, I had this idea that Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey was where it was at, and I wanted to be where it was at.
Others thought I was nuts; here, I was leaving a state with 3% unemployment, for a state with double-digit unemployment, and no home, no job, waiting for me at the other end. I applied at a firm in Pittsburgh, another in Harrisburg, and on the third day, a place in Allentown. I was employed before the first week there was even over.
(Before leaving Nebraska, an old guy had taught me a trick--"don't say 'I want a job;' say 'I want to work.'"
Damn. I can't tell you how good that advice was.)
Some years later, because I was curious about what was going on, and wanted some excitement, I quit a good job in Lincoln and headed over to the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants. No one "sponsored" me; I went there on my own dime......which wasn't a whole lot, it was exactly $184.
Having no family any longer, and as none of my friends had been enthusiastic about the enterprise, if I were to get into some sort of trouble, no one could bail me out but me. I knew not the language(s), but that was probably unimportant, because I was born deaf.
It was great, and it lasted almost two years. I was as free as a bird, dependent upon no one, making my own way, paying my own way, doing my own thing.
And then a few years later, about the time my fellow alum Skins was founding Skins's island, I got tired of living in crowded, congested Omaha. One night, a friend advised me, "why don't you come up here--it's not the Sandhills, where you belong, but it's at least the edge of the Sandhills."
I said there probably wasn't anything up here, given the sparse population and that I didn't know anybody (but him).
He replied, "You'll find it; you're always finding things that nobody else sees."
And the rest is history.
You, Amber dear, took what should've been a growing experience, an enriching experience, and metamorphosized it into a grotesque soap opera. You had a golden opportunity, and you blew it. Time to go back home to Joplin, setttle down, and accept your fate.
