personal

Warning: this post is going to gaze squarely at my navel. Like, even more than your average post on a personal blog. I apologize in advance.

As of this summer, I have spent ten years of my life in Europe – ten out of the last fifteen, with five international (plus a few domestic) moves in that time period. I’ve changed cities on average about every two years.

I feel like I should reflect on this milestone, about how I’ve chosen to live my adult life. But what is there to say? I like living in Europe. I’m OK with being a foreigner. I could try to say something deeper than that, but I’ve never been one for sentimentality. So I’ve spent most of my adult life as an outsider looking in. That’s not so odd, given I spent most of my childhood feeling foreign, too.

I’ve been a little bit foreign almost as long as I can remember. When I was a child our little nuclear family moved from New Jersey to the Deep South. My first indication that this was a bigger deal than our move from one street in the neighborhood to the other was on the airplane. It was an early-morning Delta flight, back when airlines still served food and Delta was still Southern. Breakfast consisted of biscuits smothered in white, gooey, gelatinous ickiness with little specks in it. I looked at my mother questioningly.

Read moreThat foreign feeling: ten years in Europe