Oh, Portland!

What can I say about Portland?

The trip was amazing! That's a weak adjective, but damnit there just isn't a good enough adjective for it. It was incredible. It was gorgeous. It was surreal. It was sublime.

Let me put it this way: I'm an artist. I have been as long as I can remember. But the past 10 years or so I've neglected that aspect of me. It started shortly after college, when I couldn't find a job in a horrible market for creative work. So I started working in a cubicle. That place, Stream, sucked the life out of me for over 2 years before I finally got caught up in a series of layoff waves.

I was glad to go. I was so utterly beat down by that place that I tried everything I could to get fired. Nothing worked. Nothing, until the economy started taking a nose-dive post 9/11.

Point is I blamed Stream on my lack of desire to produce art. And then during the down-turn in the economy, I couldn't find work for 6 months after the layoff. In desperation, I took an overnight stocking position at Toy's R Us, and a delivery position at Domino's Pizza.

It would've been depressing, if the pay for Domino's (with tips) didn't turn out to be so lucrative. I was happy again. I was content. And yet, I still couldn't muster up a desire to create. I dabbled a bit, and it felt good when I did, but it never lasted. I never really gave it much thought though. I was in good spirits, and making good money at quite possibly the easiest job. Ever.

Of course after that first year, things started scaling back. Drastically. What started at 20 hours a week making more money that I was at Stream in 40 hours, slowly over 2-3 years, turned into begging for 40 hours a week to barely make enough to scratch by on. I was once again in a bad place, and I knew something had to change. Soon.

By chance I landed a temporary job as an artist for an import company. They were working on getting their xmas line together, and I was called in to make some changes to existing merchandise, as well as design new merchandise. It was kind of invigorating. I hoped it would turn into a full time position, but unfortunately that wasn't to be.

But then I got a call. The company I now work for was calling me in for an interview. Strange thing though, I had put my resume into this place over 2 years prior to this call. Having not heard anything in that time I assumed they just weren't interested. And having grown up across the street from the owners, I didn't want to push the subject. I didn't want it to seem like favoritism, had I gotten a job.

It's an art-ish position. Few and far between are the times I get to produce something, mostly it's converting an engineers CAD drawings into something we can use to actually produce the label, or sign or whatever it is supposed to be. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my job. Great people to work with. I've been there now, over 3 and a half years.

I'm happy again and yet there's still no desire to create. I couldn't place my finger on why that was.

Until Portland.

In Portland it was like my whole body buzzed with anticipation. I craved for some paper and a pencil, or some chalk or charcoal. A paint brush. Anything! I wanted to create! My hands were screaming to be put to good use.

I assessed the situation. Last year I was in Hawaii. I did not feel like this, even surrounded in all that beauty. In the past 10 years I've been to Alaska, and this feeling wasn't there. I've been to Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, Mt. Rushmore, the Grand Tetons. I've been to Salt Lake City. Denver. Santa Fe. Austin. San Antonio. And more places I can't remember right now. I've never once felt that hunger that I felt in Portland.

I felt whole again. And I began to suspect that it wasn't my job, or some kind of "depression." It was Texas. That's been the common denominator through good times and bad. Texas.

I started to realize why this feeling never appeared in any other vacations I went on. What was different about Portland? Hawaii, Alaska, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons easily match the natural awe and beauty in their own ways. So why Portland?

Why indeed. Hawaii, gorgeous... but far too expensive. Alaska, also gorgeous, but as much as I like colder weather... it's even too cold for me. Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons you can't realistically live there.

And then there's Portland. It has the natural beauty. Hell, it very much reminded me, vividly, of Hawaii. But it has something else. It has a realistic cost of living expectation. For the first time in all the places I've been on vacation I truly felt like I could live here.

That was the key, I thought. The idea that I could enjoy a life there. That I could finally be creative again, because even the city was inspiring. I felt more alive in that week than I have in the past decade. And as if to hammer the point home, the instant we landed in LAX on our connecting flight back to Dallas... it was gone. That feeling. The buzz. The hunger. A sadness settled in.

I've been back from Portland now for just over a month. It's all I can think about. It's felt like I've been back a month for each week. It's not just my creative desire that's gone now. It's my desire to do anything. I've settled full force into a malaise.

I was keeping notes everyday. I was using my phone and keeping SMS drafts, as that seemed easier than needing to carry around a notepad. On the last day, as we were sitting in LAX waiting on our connecting flight, I was tapping in my thoughts when the predictive text on my phone made an astute observation:

Day 8:
Back to Dallas.
Dread.
Dallas is no longer good.

I was intending to type "home", but it certainly works either way.

I'm going to stop for now, as this is running on quite long enough. But I will be writing about Portland soon. Pictures and stuff. I just keep procrastinating. It's what I do. One final thought:

What can I say about Portland? It's home.