Running away from something...

I was lucky to have one of the best things that's ever happened to me happen because I was running away from something. I hated Cornell so much that I thought I'd better just go in-state and save money while I suffered through this terrible ordeal of college. But then by some stroke of luck or fate or strange subconscious magnetism, W&M really was the closest thing to a dream school I think I could ever have found. But now I'm not sure if this strategy of running away is actually that sustainable or effective.

Lately I've been asking myself more and more why I'm in Atlanta. I at least know logically why I made the decision to come here. The obvious reasons, I wanted to get out of Williamsburg, and two family members live in Atlanta. It seemed advantageous enough. It's a big city with lots to do for fun and (you would think) lots more opportunities than I would have had staying at home. But I've applied to way too many journalism, office assistant, receptionist, museum, and cool independent restaurant jobs and gotten rejected or flat-out ignored. So much for opportunity.

Now, my current situation: waitressing at a bar/pizza joint, driving 50 minutes every week to teach 4 little kids piano in Alpharetta, interning at Atlanta Magazine. Excluding that last one, I'm not sure I had to move to get to partake of these wonderful opportunities. The Atlanta Magazine internship is actually pretty cool, apart from being unpaid, and it's definitely worthwhile for building my resume and experience. As for the other two, I had a much better waitressing job in Williamsburg, and I only drove 10 minutes to teach lessons.

I'm really not trying to complain, even though that's what it sounds like. I'm just trying to sort out why my sense of place here isn't that strong--it doesn't even feel very different to me. Just more difficult since I'm paying my own rent now and I have hardly any connections down here. Sense of place seems like such a prominent thing for some people I've talked to, people who can compare multiple cities and who actually prefer one to another. These people are also the ones who tend to give Williamsburg so much flack for being boring (haters attacking my beloved colonial haven and almost-small-town-like intimacy). As for me, the only city I can say really made an impression on me that way was Bath--all the Georgian architecture, tons of beautiful parks and historical areas, and maybe that was only because I was just wooed by its Europeanness. I don't know, I probably just haven't really discovered Atlanta yet because I've been too busy trying to finance my survival and prepare for grad school auditions. Or maybe I need to spend some time away to realize how much it has seeped in unconsciously. OR, perhaps I'm discounting the importance of my lack of experience living in different places, not to mention my lack of experience living in cities at all and I just haven't honed my criticism yet.

It feels like I'm just going round and round. Obviously I just don't know Atlanta (having sisters here actually only compounds the problem--hanging out with them and being around their established lives makes me realize even more how unestablished mine is, and, even further, makes me less interested in claiming ownership over the city) and that explains my feeling of displacement. I was so worried about feeling trapped in Williamsburg that I just had to find somewhere to bide my time this year. Running away strategy, meh. Now, figuring out where to run towards.