every martyr in this jungle

I ran away from home last weekend.

Well, almost, and only sort of. I left my apartment Wednesday afternoon to have dinner at Panera, which involves a route that takes me by the freeway. And sitting at the red light before the overpass, I decided I wanted to drive and eat by the water. So it was onto I-4 and east through the breezy fading day to Orlando.

Which led to realizing the inherent futility of trying to derive enjoyment from a theme park by myself, of thinking that seeing SeaWorld's new baby killer whale could be something I'd be content to appreciate quietly or that eating really good German food at EPCOT would somehow make up for having to raise my beer with a tableful of strangers, and by the time I was done crossing off every prospect that had thrilled me so on the drive, it was all I could do not to feel sick to my stomach until I was well out of the city limits again.

At least half of my problem with adjusting to this new life in Lakeland is not adjusting to it. I haven't made a single attempt at meeting anyone outside of my work, and most of them have spouses and kids and do things so far outside my repertoire that we don't even bother with things beyond the usual platitudes. I harbor no particular interest in Copy Editor Brandon, the only other person even remotely my age there, I don't attend church, I don't go to school, and going to clubs was never really my thing even when I had people to go with. I live more than a little bit for Former Editor Mike's visits so my questions stop being de facto rhetorical and I don't have to eat alone.

None of which is fair to the new people I do have in my life, like Designer John, who makes for a limited but otherwise enthusiastic squee partner about all things sci-fi and leaves newspaper clippings about Dr. Who on my chair for me, Metro Editor Billy, who makes it a pleasure to come to work all night long and inspires me to try harder, and Desk Chief Andy, who tells me about air shows and strawberry festivals as suggestions to have family and friends visit and always asks after me in small ways. And I do still own a telephone and computer.

But it was all I could do not to lock myself in a bathroom stall and have a quiet little breakdown Sunday night. Andy talks about "next year this" and Brandon says things like "looking to buy a house here" and Copy Editor Ben visits his dad who lives in the house he was raised in about 20 miles away, and I look at them with horror in my gut, fending off increasingly beckoning memories of Paris and running away there with walkingshadow to give guided tours of the Louvre, learning to love the smell of carpeted public transit and slumming it in a ratty flat on the seventh floor in a building without elevators. We'd eat 2 Euro cheese-and-tomato baguettes from street vendors and walk the Seine at night and pop into London to see a play over the weekend and visit every museum in the city on their free nights, living poor and peerlessly happy.

Yet some of my co-workers have lived in Lakeland all their lives and want nothing more than to keep doing just as they are. When it comes to jobs, people have all kinds of motives - money, employee discounts, love of the game, something to do. I should've remembered before taking this gig that I would've waited tables in the dangerous parts of New York City for the chance to live there. But even if not an ocean away, I need out of this town by the time my lease is up at the end of the year.

( SIDEBAR: Which means remembering that this is not a drill. )

The thinking that went into my taking the job as Metro Editor at the Alligator in December 2004 was how badly I wanted to contribute more to the paper, remembering how bitter I'd been about a very sub-par co-worker being made Freelance Editor the semester before and proving it should've been me, that I would be working most closely and directly with Justin, whom I'd admired since the first night I started working there. I knew this would be work that gave my university career meaning, that the doing of it would make me happy for the first time since writing papers for Ms. Igualada in high school.

I need that kamikaze commitment, and there is exactly nothing here that inspires that in me, hence the increasingly uncontrollable wanderlust for what else is out there. I realize that this is a necessarily cushioned, relatively safe and smart first step into the real world of journalism. But that doesn't make it feel any less pointless than going to class did while I was learning three times as much at the office every night. While hostel-hopping in Europe, I met several girls my age who came to a city, found a job of some ilk and made just enough to eat and sleep somewhere, then went someplace new when they got bored. What an extraordinary way to live. Not that there aren't admitted advantages to my non-minimum wage salary or the fantastic New York Times health coverage or you know, not waiting tables, but right now all I want again is for the world to stretch boundless with possibility before me again like it did when I walked on UF's campus and sat endlessly chainsmoking in the sidewalk cafe at Boulevard Arago.

And then I remember that I, too, want to do just one near-perfect thing, and I think working for the actual New York Times could be it, and that's maybe worth having less caffeine and French food and lazy afternoons until then. But maybe one of you should come down for a weekend so we can go to Disney and eat chocolate croissants in the shadow of EPCOT's faux Tour Eiffel nonetheless.

[P.S. I keyworded this icon a dream in my hands, because the idea that Rodney went all the way to the Pegasus Galaxy in a (small, subconscious) attempt to work his way back to Sam is an impossibly romantic one. And one that I can appreciate at this juncture.]