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 I graduated with my BS from the University of Georgia in 1993. I set out trying to find my true calling in Atlanta when I quickly realized that my chosen profession of adolescent mental health wasn’t for me. I had a few jobs, from waitressing to website sales for a dot com. Nothing seemed to be exactly right, so I found some way to weave one common thread into my work in each of the jobs that I had – I wrote. Whether it was a staff announcement made into a limerick or writing emails to customers or even if it was writing rants in my journal, I wrote and kept on writing.
Yearning for a new home that had less humidity and different landscape than Atlanta, I traveled across this great land of ours by car with a friend. We didn’t make it to Portland. We made it to Bend before we ran out of money, then made a beeline back to Atlanta. I didn’t find my new home, though I knew that I loved the natural beauty of the West Coast.
In 1999, I climbed one of the tallest freestanding mountains in the world, Mt. Kilimajaro, in Tanzania, Africa with 5 other friends, then went on safari, then to Zanzibar Island,
off the eastern coast of Africa. While in Africa, I had an epiphany. I realized that you find kind, generous people everywhere
When I returned from Africa, I took a business trip to San Diego and decided to move there. I loved the sand, the ocean, the sunshine, the dry heat, the proximity to a foreign land. I loved it all. I even convinced the love of my life, Eric, to move to San Diego sight-unseen. Now I had a partner in crime. Let me be the first to tell you, visiting San Diego is very different from living in San Diego. When you visit, you’re most likely going to stay in a nicer part of town on the beach. When you live there, you’re most likely living inland, paying an exorbitant amount for rent, in a neighborhood with bars on the windows and a pack of feral cats outside your door. We weren’t poverty-stricken, but we were
definitely living ghetto-UNfabulous. Eric and I quickly realized we weren’t
Not wanting to give up on the West Coast, we moved to Portland, Oregon, after hearing good things about it, but never visiting. More than one person in my life has mentioned that I would really like Portland. It’s so true. Portland feels more like home than anywhere else I’ve visited or lived. The weather, the people, the writing…it all comes together for me here. I’m hooked like a salmon in the spring. 
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The second time I went cross-country, it was for the aforementioned dot com, MindSpring now Earthlink, with 3 others in an RV covered in original artwork by Peter Max, of “Yellow Submarine” fame. I drove the 36-foot RV and showed off the company’s Internet access by day, then wrote online journals at night about our travels, posted on the company website. We weaved through the Terwilliger curves, straight through Portland on our way to our Seattle gigs, but our bus brakes were shot, and I, once again, didn’t get the opportunity to stop in Stumptown.
you go and that to whatever town I chose to move, I would be all right. I just had to make a go of it.
ever going to be able to afford a house
unless we dramatically changed our careers, with the average house price at $365,000.
For a shoebox with bars on the windows in the ghetto? I don’t think so. We met some great friends that we’ll have forever, but we had to go.