Journal: Part the First

     Home, it is said, is where the heart lies, but I often wonder if it is more where the heart is placed. Is home chosen by the heart? Or the heart chosen by the home? Or is it, perhaps, where the heart is given.
     These questions often plague my mind, but for no reason; they simply come when I ponder how much I love home. Of course, who doesn't love their home? And no, I'm not talking about the house, I'm talking about everything else.
     I love my town. It's old, it's historic, and in it you can sometimes find quirky people. Like the old man who sits in his lawn chair, feet propped up on the fire hydrant, and watches the cars go by.
    I love the woods across the street. I've spent my entire life in those woods. I played, I acted, I ran away. I whispered my secrets to the air, and explained why it was a desecration to wear shoes there. Even to this day I sort out my thoughts underneath that bright green, pine straw canopy.
    I love the animals. I say hello to the gray fox that lives across the way almost everyday. I sing back the tunes of the birds, I even used to be friends with the bees.
    I love everything about my home. And sometimes, when I'm walking in it, I wonder if  I was lucky to be born in my favorite place...just like Tootie.
    But then, I think about everyone else and how some of them seem unhappy here, (and I can't imagine why) but their dis-contentedness reminds me that my goal is to leave. My goal is to get out of my favorite place in the world and go to somewhere I think might be better...to find a new favorite place, because to stay with this one feels like settling, and I don't settle.
    I've written stories like this: where the main character moves halfway around the world to the "greener grass" and does indeed find it greener, but that really isn't how it works.
    I suppose it's okay to write stories with happy endings, but whoever heard of one with a realistic ending? If someone uprooted their self and moved somewhere they had never been to before, well, let's just face it, it wouldn't be easy for them...at all.
    I guess you could call this reality, but I like to call it the brutal truth. My plan won't work very well, I know this, and yet I keep hoping, I keep researching, I keep doing every blasted thing I can do to make sure that I know where I wanna end up. It's not here.