What to say...

So I was just thinking about how many blogs there are out there and how I don't have one. For the longest time I wasn't even sure what they were or how they worked. Being a school teacher who values the use of technology to express ideas, I felt a little inadequate in this area. Maybe I was really just worried about not having anything of importance to say. Then I realized, as much as I like to talk, I must have something to say to people outside my small circle of friends and acquaintances, so here it goes.

Basically, I have been living in the same town since 1974. My father was in the military, which is why we moved to this little place. Now don't get me wrong. I have left this town several times, but there is some force that keeps pulling me back. Is it familiarity, insecurity, or fear of the unknown? I still don't know.

When I graduated high school, I purposely went away to a college three hours away so I couldn't run home every weekend like I had seen so many of my friends do. I graduated early and moved to New York, but couldn't afford graduate school there and moved back home after 2 years. After graduate school, I married and moved 10 hours away for 2 years and then 16 hours away from my home town. The distance still wasn't enough to free me from that unknown force. My husband was supposed to go Korea for a year, and I couldn't imagine living so far from home with a one year old, so I moved back home until he left the military. I thought it was only temporary, yet here I am 9 years later.

The town I grew up in is definitely not the same. Urban sprawl is taking over. I long to be in a place where I can walk into a grocery store and not worry about who I am going to run into from high school -- trying to place names with faces. I would love to be in a place where people don't remember me as the chubby girl with coke bottle glasses and say, "Wow, your daughter is the spitting image of you." What does that really mean anyway?

I will keep looking for that ideal place. Until then, I better remember to put my face on when I go to grocery store and keep a copy of my yearbook out in the car.