Scene Change

Lots of people know this, but for those who don’t for whatever reason, here’s the big news:  Elle and I have left New York.

One one hand, it feels like it was a long time coming, and on the other hand I’m still reeling from how sudden it seemed.  Here we are, engaged in New York, then getting married and being married in New York, living the cosmopolitan young-adult lifestyle with high paying jobs, expensive tastes, and just about every hour of our days spoken for by something.  Then, less than a year after the wedding, we’re pulling up stakes and leaving the most famous and glamorous city in the Western world to settle down in northern Alabama.

Let’s look at a few comparisons.  From skyscrapers, we’ve moved to a farm.  From subways to a Jeep Wrangler.  From the 24-hour Duane Reade, to a city-block-sized Wal-Mart that closes at eleven.  From a wine bar to a dry county (what??).  Goodbye, shoulder to shoulder pedestrian traffic in a city of millions; hello, population five thousand, all of which wave at each other when they drive by.  No more of hearing twenty different languages a day, we are now in the land of wall to wall English, with a thick Deep South drawl laid over it.  Our one-bedroom, first floor apartment has become a three bedroom, two bathroom house with an industrial kitchen and more counter space that we know how to use.  Our independent-couple lifestyle and dining-out ways have been traded in, for our family living right next door and inviting us to a home cooked dinner every night.

Most of the people I’ve built relationships with over the years will now be asking, “Who are you and what have you done with Josh?”

I’m still me.  And I get it – even I get amazed with the shifts my life has undergone over the last two or three years.  This isn’t where I saw myself ten years ago.  But you know what – I’m cool with it.  I’m even excited.

Here’s why we did it.  I’m 35 and Elle just turned thirty, and here’s us looking at our lives.  Waiting tables, not making a living as actors and theater people the way we planned when we moved to New York.  nothing wrong, we really loved our life and our friends and our city, but what works when you’re thirty wouldn’t fly at fifty.  A fifty year old actor, still doing one or two plays a year for no income, waiting for that big break (for our career, that is, not snapping our old and brittle hips)?  Please.  Or, rather, no thank you.

So we’re in Alabama, living in a town where not even the high school has a theater program, never mind the public community.  We’re starting a theater company.  They’re a dime a dozen in New York, but down here we’re the only game in town.  Most of the people here don’t even know what they’re missing, yet, by not having a theater scene.  We intend to teach them, to create the need, then to fill it. 

Then there’s family.  I’d have shot myself for saying this ten years ago, but it’s really great to live so close to family – people who will do for you without you asking them to, and who love with no agenda or trade-off.  Who knew that could be so cool?  So there’s that, now.  Then, there’s Elle and I planning to start our own family.  There’s something to be said for doing that with your loving kin living just a few steps from home.  Especially when my father in law, Elle’s dad, is a mommy-doctor by trade.  Not a bad neighbor to have when you’re expecting to be expecting.

Obviously there’s a lot more to be said on all this.  I’ve been away from the blog for most of the planning and execution of this huge life change, and now there’s all these other things to muse on.  Starting our own business, starting a family, and settling into a brand new community, just for a start.  Then let’s talk about the culture shock.

But brevity is the soul of wit.  It’s for you, kind reader, to judge on the wit, but at least I can make a brave stab at the brevity thing.

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~ by joshkauffman on May 14, 2010.