I need to find a way to travel to Santa Fe to visit said school. Either I need a particularly cheap method of transportation, or I need to raise the funds for typical transportation.

When I read about the school, I giggle, it seems so right, ideal. But my romantic imagining of the school is one thing, and I really must visit and attend class—and meet the students. It is too much of a monetary investment (and time!). I need to be sure.

… advice?

Let’s be honest here, right?

So, I do not have a certain feeling or calling to do anything in particular in the next six months, except, perhaps, to find a therapist. 

And I’ve never been much of a believer at all in the traveling-as-a-way-in-which-to-find-oneself. You can blame Emerson for that:

“Traveling is a fool’s paradise… I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there besides me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”

And so, I have a laundry list of trips I would like to make, of cities I would like to visit and countrysides to linger in, but I have little interest/working ambition to make these a reality at this time, especially as I have little money and no car (as it currently stands). Besides, I would rather not travel alone, but with a trusted companion, and preferably someone with more interest in this whole trip planning business (I’m looking at you, Savanna.) There are oddball colleges I’ve liked in Vermont and Maine, in New Mexico, in Minnesota, in Oregon and Washington, and though part of me wishes I could attend, I also recognize that I am disinterested in accruing more student loans, living on campus, consumed with schoolschoolschool. I realize I am kind of a homebody. I love cooking, I love clean linens, I enjoy reading and painting and baking pretty things. I like coming home to the refuge for myself that I have created, and I like sharing it with others.

Now. Here’s a plan I have been considering.

My job here is awful. We do good work, it is true, but any day that is not actually awful is only neutral (never rewarding), and still very, very tiring. I am working for workings’ sake, really, and I am saving for a car. 

Hopefully I will be able to see this Volvo tonight, that Griffin’s high school friend is selling. Even without this job, I have enough money to purchase it already saved. The thought of owning a car really is the one thought keeping me at my job, and if that goal is met, well, I’m getting the hell out of Dodge. (no car pun intended).

Then, I could start planning to move to Lexington. I need to be in one place in order to find a therapist, establish a less-temporary living situation, and establish a less-temporary job situation. Lexington is closer to my family than Louisville (and near cousins who have children and need a babysitter!), and closer to Danville, so that Griffin and friends can come visit me and vice versa. Although I love Louisville and can see myself living there in the future, I am more familiar with Lexington, which reduces any stress I hold about living alone in a city. And, since I don’t hear any divine soul-whisperings into what I should do with myself at the moment, I figure it would be best to be proactive about it and keep myself occupied with a few classes at UK (in subjects I could not explore much at Former College), a part-time job, baking, therapy, etc. You know, until I glean a better idea about how I want to forge my life ahead.