Saying Goodbye to San Diego

I went on a late-night drive around the areas I've lived near UCSD and went around the campus loop one time. As I drove, I thought and I reminisced.

Like high school, college held a lot of good memories mixed in with regrets and mistakes. But in college, I felt like I had made every single one of my own decisions, good or bad. And that sense of independence, the freedom to make my own mistakes, is what kept me here after graduation despite having no income.

I realized that I had a quite a bit of regrets about my college years but that I also couldn't keep those thoughts from escalating into regrets I have had throughout my life. Maybe, I thought as I drove, I could visit those memories - fond and otherwise - one last time and put all of them away. Like my regrets, I think about the what-ifs and the woulda-shoulda-couldas. But, at the risk of sounding cheesy, I wouldn't be who I am today or where I am today. I can never go back and all my hypothetical futures are just that -- hypothetical. Why think about the then and there when there is plenty in the here and now?

So, I'm coming to terms with leaving San Diego. There is a Chinese proverb about how not moving forward is the same as moving backward. There is no such thing as standing still. We are innately afraid of change but it is exactly that change that keeps us going. When nothing is changing, nothing is happening.

I'm trying to make arrangements to see as many of my San Diego friends as possible before I go, but time is short and they are busy people. I'm going to miss them, the city, the campus atmosphere, all the perks of a college town, and -- most of all -- the person I got to be when I was on my own in college. But that person is only a part of who I'm going to be.

I read somewhere that those who say high school or college was the best four years of their lives led very sad lives. We should always look up and forward, for we never know what the future has in store for us.

Goodbye, San Diego. I'll miss you but I won't be sorry for leaving. Thanks for the memories.