Well, I’ve done it, and now there’s no going back.
After coming to Idaho (from New York) 11 years ago, I’ve made the decision to move to Oregon. I sold my house in Boise and I’m flying to Portland this weekend to find a new place to live. It’s not the first time I’ve packed up and moved to a new state, but that doesn’t make the decision any less daunting.
Don’t get me wrong, Boise is a nice place to live, and I’ve made good friends here. This is the place where I built my house and planted twiggy saplings which matured into majestic, big, beautiful shade trees. This is where I learned how to train my dogs; where we had so much fun competing in obedience, rally, and agility trials. It’s the land of fry sauce and Bronco football. Unfortunately, Boise is also at least a 7-hour drive (or a connecting flight) from anywhere I want to go.
Since I’m no longer bound to Boise by a job, I picked Portland; largely because of its location, climate, and active genre writing community. Many successful genre authors live there, and there are many genre-specific writing classes, conferences and learning opportunities available to writers. In addition to the Cascade Writers Conference, there’s the Willamette Writers Conference, Oregon Writers Colony, and OryCon, to name a few. I heard an agent say once that there must be something in the water in Portland, because so many good Science Fiction and Fantasy writers who live there. Well, I want to be one of them. I want to live among my ‘peeps’.
I’m building a whole new world for myself. I’m excited, worried, nervous, and everything in-between. It’s a big step. It’s a leap of faith. It’s time to move on.
