A Dispatch from New Beginnings

“It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.”- Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

Well hello.

Now that I officially have the good old internet once again, this is indeed my first ever dispatch from my new beginning. I was going to name a poem that, but to be frank the poem wound up sounding kind of stupid and so it became a blog title instead. Why waste good words, even if there are only five of them? Anyway! I suppose this is the introduction of Portland Luke (‘Portly’ for short). Gone are the days of me being a medium-sized (yet unknown) fish in a puddle, and here are the days of me being a bluegill-looking thing in the Atlantic Ocean. Was this the right choice? In the words of my hero (myself), ‘Who the hell knows?’. But today is my two week anniversary of living somewhere entirely knew for the first time in my entire life, so I figure that’s something worth celebrating with a tongue-in-cheek blog post.

What is life for if not to celebrate somewhat pedestrian life achievements?

Anyway. Life is going well here. I’ll probably wind up looking for a job in roughly the next ten days so that financial stress doesn’t become all-consuming, but for the time being I really am enjoying my meandering walk-about life through my new city. I’ve managed to write two new short stories, roughly 25 pages each, and they both were met with resounding approval from my eternally-trustworthy superfriend Jess (last seen as a ‘review’ in “It Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time”), so I can at least say that these first two random weeks have been creatively productive. In personal life terms? Not so much. I’m better at randomly wandering into a decades-long friendship than I am “Hello stranger, will you be my friend?”, so it’s been a rather lonely couple of weeks, but then again I’m a rather lonely person so I can’t say this is anything new or unanticipated.

As the Gaiman quote indicates, I seem to have brought myself to Portland. What a drag!

But really, life out here is going quite well. I could complain but I’ll save that for my insane short stories I’m currently working on. Petty negativity is better expressed creatively, or so I’ve found. Life is short so you might as well murder little lemons indiscriminately for the sake of consuming their life force and bodily fluids, that’s what I always say. And I have, I think. The walks through gorgeous parks and trees have been numerous, my exploration of local bars and restaurants has been sublime (featuring great beer and some truly lovely sushi), and I’ve already added four new birds to my Birding Life List. Pileated Woodpeckers, it turns out, are just as gorgeous and awe-inspiring as I always believed them to be.

I will admit it is a strange thing to be out here, however. I’ve never been the greatest at recognizing the passage of time, so there is already a part of me that feels as if I’ve always been here. I often find it difficult to relive my day-to-day life in Bismarck, North Dakota, and find moments of memories flashing through my mind at a cinematic pace at the absolute strangest of times. But I do miss my family and friends out there. I miss the boxing nights with my folks and the card games on Sunday mornings. I miss the beers and hangs with the coworkers who became friends (or vice versa). And I miss the sushi nights and random rambles with the creative types I really only just got around to meeting and enjoying right before I left.

And yet here we are, in Portland anyway.

It was for the best, I know that. The uncertainty in my new life will kick into gear aspects of my creativity that were rusting away into oblivion back home and I’d imagine I’ll be better off for it. Although I will at some point need to get a car, because there is a definite limit to my current adventurous escapades for the time being, and that’s a rather annoying truth. I had hoped to get by as long as I could, but dammit there’s an ocean out there just 90 minutes away and I’ll be damned if I’m going to just let it sit there doing nothing without me. But other than the infrequent loneliness and missing of loved ones, the uncertainty and anxiety that comes with an infinite amount of new things, and all the other stuff I’ve cathartically complained about, I really am enjoying my time out here.

Will it be the eternal home of Luke Ganje, part-time author, full-time undiscovered male model? Who knows. But it’s a change of pace that’s been mostly a joy to experience so far and I hope it pays dividends in my writing. I’d always thought of myself as a limitless fount of inspiration and imagination, but it turns out that living in the same place, working the same job, doing the same thing, and staring at the same walls over and over and over again for years, can actually be a little detrimental to my whole ‘imaginary friend’ attempt at wandering lethargically through life. For the time being, this will be better. I will (eventually) meet new people and see a bunch of truly weird shit I never would’ve seen at the Bismarck Denny’s, and that’s alright with me.

Maybe one day I’ll tear through the front page of The Bismarck Tribune with a release of “The Nodak Nomad: How A Bismarck Native Calls Himself a Nomad Despite Never Really Going To Too Many Places or Even Doing Very Much”. Look out, Cliff Naylor. I’m coming for you and I’m stealing your fans (the unaware elderly while they’re still alive) and I’m never giving them back.

But for now I’ll leave you with this, because the day is moving along and I need to do something other than pushups and blogging: I am enjoying the experience, it’s been quite a ride already, and so far I’m not dead.

Which, when it comes to that last part especially, I think we can all acknowledge is a positive plot twist none of us saw coming.