On Bombing My First Writing Assignment

My friend, Pete, asked me to write a blog post on what it's like to repeatedly make a new life someplace and then leave it.  I was excited to be given a creative writing assignment - my first since college - but after mulling it over for a couple of days, I am stuck.  I've moved around a lot from a young age but I'm not sure I have anything remotely insightful or fresh to say on it.  We all have had to make friends from scratch, to find our way around a new place, to say goodbye to important people in our lives.  I suspect Pete and I have had similar experiences, even if the circumstances have differed. 

Other people's life experiences can often be easier to appreciate than our own, no? During last weekend's hot tub party, one of the members of our group asked about coping mechanisms for with living in difficult places.  I was surprised to find he was talking not only to our friend, Alex, but also to me.  Just to be clear: Alex has lived in Iraq. He had earlier told a story about a suicide bomb attack on the mosque next door to his house.  He and others in the hot tub covered Pakistan, Sudan, Jordan, Sri Lanka,  India, the Balkans.  I was confused about why my opinion was being sought out.  Did I misrepresent myself and give the impression that I lead a much more dramatic life than I do?  

I guess one person's mundane is another person's exotic.  As a child living in Grenada, I had a family a friends who were born and raised in the same town in Michigan.  Their grandparents lived there, their cousins lived there, and they were returning to that town, that house, after Grenada.  I was in awe of that kind of life: of being so grounded to a place and so connected to people who have known you all your life.  My friends never really understood what I found so fascinating about that.  

I talked about that again with one of those kids a couple of years ago.  Joe went to university in Michigan and then taught there before moving to DC to work on the Hill where we reconnected.  His parents still have the farm in Michigan and Joe and his siblings are still very much Michigan farm kids.  Joe has gotten married and bought a house in DC but unlike 10-year-old-Joe, he is truly appreciative of his strong connections to the place he grew up.  He gets why I marvel at his life and find it exotic!

This is a long and rambling post to say, Pete, I don't have an answer to your post request (I suspect a moderate amount of alcohol plays a role) but I would be interested to hear what your experience has been.  How about doing a guest post?