Alaskan Home Sick

So it's a new year and thank God for that much, at least. 2009 sees me unemployed, but I'm already getting back into the swing of freelance writing once again, I have plenty of side projects to keep me busy and enough severance pay and tax return money to get me thinking once again. I miss having a lot of friends around, and being a wanderlust sort of fellow, Iowa just isn't quite doing it for me. Been there/done that for 19 years and change, and it's time to be moving on again.

Alaska is one of the few places that really made me feel at home, and I still have plenty of good friends there. Since all my work is online, a major question comes to mind: what am I doing here?

Part of it I'm sure is just getting a little time to settle. Seems like yesterday I was moving from Alaska to Texas to take a new job, and then a little more than a year later it's pink slip time like it is for so many others, and so I'm left to looking for greener pastures. This brings up some really good questions, including the types of questions that a lot of people maybe should ask in general, unemployed or not:

Why am I here?
What am I doing?
Is this what I want in life?
Am I happy where I am?
If not, why not and how do I fix it?

I've written about living each day to the fullest, one of many small philosphies I believe in, and that's one of the reasons that taking long walks is so important to me: it gets me out of wherever I'm staying and out where I can meet people, see changing scenery, or just have some time to think about things. And for me, even the prospect of having to survive another Alaska winter isn't enough to prevent me from heading back. In all honesty, in a strange way the winters are part of the fun.

All of us are different, but too many people just go through a rut and make life an unhappy prison from which they dupe themselves into believing there's no escape. I suppose I could be depressed about the economy, about losing my dream job, about moving yet again or about how time passes and the confusion that follows with growing up, but what's the point? I'd rather stay relatively happy and look forward to what's coming up next.

So for someone like me whom technology has given the ability to work anywhere, anytime, as long as I have a reasonable Internet connection and a laptop, the decision is easy. Go back to the place where I have the greatest concentration of friends still hanging out in one area, asking me to come back. I'll be heading back to Sweet Home Alaska, to keep working on my projects and to see what's next for me, to see if I'm half as good as I think I am, and to do what's right for myself until it's time to move again.

Best of luck to everyone this new year, and let's hope we all end up having a great year of happiness and hope.