Sometimes I imagine where I would be if I wasn’t here in Nome.
Six months ago I was applying for jobs, getting ready to graduate from college, and laying awake at night wondering if I would/could/should go work at a radio station in western Alaska. But when Laura called to tell me they wanted to offer me a position here, I said yes before she even told me what my job would be. I’m pretty sure I interrupted her, actually, and then repeated “yes” 5 or 6 times throughout our conversation, just to be safe. All the anxiety fell away, and I just reacted.
Sometimes moving here has been hard, frustrating, and complicated. But would I really trade that in for familiar and easy and boring? No. Which all leads me to think that a lot of what I’m working through here are things I would have had to work through no matter where I ended up. I know myself; I would have found another, less showy adventure, and I would have been an adult with a full-time job in a new place, just as I am here.
It’s hard to write these blog posts because of this. I keep trying to dredge up something specific to here that I’m dealing with, something specific about living in WAK that challenges or fulfills me. But it’s impossible to separate the perpetual, brilliant sunsets, and falling on ice three times this week, and finding an old mechanical horse in the bed of a rusty old pickup from the more conventional things: learning to add a music bed at just the right time, and mispronouncing the Pipettes on the air again (it’s Pip-ettes, NOT Pipe-ettes), and letting go of my procrastinating habits finally.
What I want to talk about all the time is my job, volunteering at the library in the rare books room, and how I have enough free time to go to the rec center and cross stitch again. They’re the same things I would have been talking about if I’d gotten that job in North Carolina or found something in Seattle, because the biggest change in life right now is that I’m not a full-time student anymore.
I think later in my life I’ll be able to look back and see how being here in Nome and working here at KNOM put me on a different path. And I know I’m changing because of living here, but those alterations are too jumbled up in this lifestyle overhaul I’ve done for me to see them right now. But I’m still chipping away here, and finding out more about myself every week. (For instance: I discovered during the open mic last weekend that I have an irrational but powerful fear of ventriloquist dolls. Not sure what to do about that, but I know now. Hey, it’s something.)
