It’s time to move on…

9 Comments » // September 7th, 2010

As many of you know, I have recently decided to move back to what I consider to be the best city in the world, also known as Portland, Oregon.  I was born and raised in the Portland Metropolitan Area (aside from the 4 years I lived Mukilteo, WA from age 2-6, which all I remember of is eating a lot of Mac ‘N Cheese and watching a lot of Wonder Woman), so for me this means I am going home!  Most of my family lives in the Portland area and I have a lot of amazing friends there too.

So I’m pretty damn excited about finally going home again…except for when I am at my new amazing grad school, CIIS.  Man, when I am there, I get really bummed that I finally found some real quality people I want to hang out with in the Bay Area and now I am leaving…how crazy am I?!  But even though I am connecting with all these new, amazing people, every time I consider staying I realize that I just really want to move back to PDX.  For so many reasons.  Plus, I know that I will maintain these connections because I will spend one long weekend a month with these peeps AND our connections are on a much deeper level than your average friendship because of the program/situation we are in.  Good stuff.

But back to why I want to move to Portland: the overarching reason is the fact that I want to settle down there.  I want to have a life there.  I want to raise kids there. So being that I am single right now and the chances of me meeting someone down here who would want to move to Portland are slim, it’s a really good time for me to move up there.  And very soon I will have to start finding a clinic to do my practicum in.  Practicum is where I get a large amount of the clinical hours I will need for licensing as a psychotherapist…and they are done while you are in school…kind of like an internship.  Well it makes sense that if I want to eventually be licensed in Oregon, that I need to get my hours in Oregon and should start networking in the Portland therapeutic community as soon as possible in order to find a great practicum there!

So it really makes sense for me to move NOW.  Plus I just freaking heart Portland more than I can explain and have missed it the entire 9 years I have been away.  Most of the time I was gone I talked about moving back someday, had Oregon stickers on my car, etc.  In the past year I especially started noticing that I was doing a little of the “when I finally move back to Portland, then my life can really start”.  While I don’t want to think like that about anything, I also realized that it was a clear message that I needed to just get back soon.  I’m glad I got to experience both L.A. and the Bay Area…they rock in their own way too.  But, as Tom Petty says, it’s time to move on.