i think my life might be better if i lived in colorado
hey google play Reneé Rapp
before this year i had never been to Colorado, and now i’ve visited twice in the last sixty days. the first, a July road trip with my mom and family from LA to SD to Vegas to Moab to Boulder to Denver. the second, a high-octane triathlon of scooters and e-bikes and hiking and white water tubing with my dad and family. both were lovely. beautiful. blue-skyed and mountainous.
but are these back-to-back trips just another example of “divorced kid problems” all grown up? or a cosmic sign that i’m meant to live in the centennial state?
when i used to think about Colorado, i thought about a boy. typical! this one (let’s call him Ben) was sweet. we met in the throws of Covid. our first date was ice cream, and our second was an indoor “picnic” because the air in California was too toxic from the wildfires for us to go outside, the sun an ominous cherry tomato that you could glimpse while getting your nose swabbed at Dodger’s stadium.
ah yes, the romance of 2020!!!
a few weeks after we met, Ben’s friends moved to Colorado to take advantage of their newly remote jobs, so he did too. which meant that for our third (maybe fourth?) and final date, Ben and i decided to meet “halfway” between Colorado and California and explore Zion National Park. after that, we never really spoke again. and if i squint my eyes, i can see the exact moment on the drive to the airport where we both realized the distance doomed us to being nothing more than a story for the other to tell at parties.
but i don’t hold it against either of us.
especially not after seeing Colorado for myself.
in addition to the sights and sounds and afternoon rain showers, there’s one thing from my travels that struck me far more than the other things. and that’s the thing i wanted to try and write about today, the same thing that has previously led me to blast Rapp’s iconic sad girl anthem with my windows down on the freeway.
so if you haven’t listened yet, go on. i’ll wait.
but this Thing, spoiler alert, has very little to do with Colorado.
have you ever realized there is a particular line of questioning and make-believe that comes with visiting a new place, a secret language that pulls us in just as quickly as it can push us away? i used to think this was something only my mom did, because her mom found a second career flipping and restoring houses, and i’ve always thought we have DIY restoration/imagination in our blood. but i’m sure you’ve heard it too:
can you see yourself here? can’t you? where DO you see yourself? what do you like about where you’re living now? what kind of food is this city known for? don’t you think you’d be happy here? HAPPIER? what makes you think this place could be a good fit for you? how does this city compare to where you are now? what kind of viiiibe are you looking for? what do you do for fun here? can you picture yourself settling down? can’t you? don’t you think you’d like hiking every morning? wouldn’t it be fun to become farmer’s market people!?
a quick search has since taught me that “pulling a geographic” is a term that alcoholics use, the idea being that changing your physical location will have a significant impact on your symptoms. and i believe it. but there’s something about the thought exercise that makes me uneasy, if only because it seems like such an obvious omission that we aren’t happy with where we are.
but where should we go?
who should we be?
when i moved to Los Angeles, i did it for work and without question. i wasn’t afraid of making the jump, but in hindsight i think it’s only because i made the decision before i knew i should be. a coworker once told me that if you can “last” in LA for three years you’ll never leave, and now, seven years later, i have a hard time picturing life elsewhere. which is to say i DO picture my life, EVERYWHERE ELSE. and it IS hard! because just like Hinge and Bumble (or Coffee Meets Bagel…*shudders*) have decimated the dating world, we can blame Zillow for homewrecking our ability to play-pretend in the present day.
honestly, maybe this just is a symptom of being twenty-nine. maybe this kind of geographic existentialism is supposed to be happening Right Now. but i see so many people asking themselves these questions, weighed down by them, regardless of their age (and if this is you please know i am waving through my computer screen shouting YOU ARE NOT ALONE LET’S UPEND OUR LIVES TOGETHER!!). not to mention that in my small corner of the tv and film world, many people are leaving LA to be closer to family, save money, save themselves, or finally get that yard for a dog, gosh darn it!
at my core, i believe that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, but rather who you are with. and that’s the thing i think we are really looking for when we travel. someone, not someplace. and as the tarot/Hallmark cards tell us, if we’re lucky, that person might even end up being ourselves. right?
which brings us to the one, most important, most cliché question of all.
where to next?
more soon xo