I haven’t blogged during the second half of my time in Chicago. In fact, I haven’t posted anything since early November-over three months ago. Though a lot happened during that time, the idea of sitting down and writing something about my recent experiences or reflections always just sounded like a chore. I didn’t feel like I had anything to say that I hadn’t already said.

I absolutely love Chicago, and it had really started feeling like home. However, going back to Texas over Thanksgiving and Christmas helped me realize just how much I really do love Dallas. It’s my true home, and I ultimately want to end up back there. I was always tentatively planning on moving back to Dallas at the 6-month mark, but that’s when I made the final decision.

So, the new year has seen my heart and mind pointed southward. I still adore Chicago, and I’m so glad that I’m here, but I’m also very excited about getting back home and finally settling in.

Now that my days in Chicago can be counted on my fingers and the toes of one foot, my emotions are becoming increasingly conflicted. More on that later.

Good luck, and good fortnight.

Pilsen, it turns out, is a large neighborhood southwest of downtown. So I jumped on the L and headed further out from home than I’d yet gone. The apartment where I was ultimately headed was a 15 minute walk from the station, so after getting off the train, I found myself strolling down a street unlike any I’d yet seen in Chicago.

After just a brief glance, its obvious that Pilsen is a predominantly hispanic neighborhood. The restaurants, shops and storefronts were all lined with Dia de los Muertos decorations, the sides of buildings were beautifully painted in huge, distinctly urban-hispanic murals, and the sweet scent of Mexican bakeries filled the evening air as I passed block after block dotted with art galleries and handmade craft shops. From the brief experience I had, it was a lovely, charming neighborhood.

For the purposes of this post, though, that short walk made me realize just how sheltered I’d become. This beautiful little village is 20 minutes from my apartment, and I didn’t even know it existed. And there are countless other equally distinct and fascinating neighborhoods dotting the city, and I’ve seen none of them.

I’ve completely reshuffled my life so I could spend 6 months in arguably the greatest urban locale in these United States. And now that I’m here, I’ve fallen into an almost identical routine as I had back in Dallas. While it might be comforting in the moment, it completely defeats the purpose. I’m not going to want to look back on these months and see little to differentiate them from the life I left or came back to.

So for the past few weeks, I’ve started branching out in what has been a gradual, abstract process. Instead of going to the Starbucks two blocks down, I hop on the L and spend 10 minutes traveling to Kickstand. Instead of defaulting to Chipotle if I’m hungry and don’t want to cook, I find another restaurant on Yelp to try out. I try to spend my weekend afternoons visiting a new area of Chicago or two. And if I get exhausted or needing some familiarity, Division Street is always there waiting for me.

It’s a slow process, and still a far cry from a full-on embrace of the sights and culture of Chicago. Though it’s exciting and fun, novelty is exhausting; especially in large doses. Plus, having to juggle a job and all of the responsibilities of adulthood make the reality of that dream a bit more complex. The challenge is striking a balance between experiencing the city and finding a perpetuable lifestyle.

So yeah, I still eat a lot of Chipotle.

I really like Chicago. I mean, I really really like it. I honestly cannot imagine a better, more epitomic American city. It fully embodies exactly what I’ve always thought a metropolis could and should be. Chicago is simply a great town. And the experience as a whole has been as contrary and different as I’d hoped it would be.

Having come two months into my time here, it’s becoming increasingly fascinating to look back on my time in Chicago. The more time that passes, the more perspective I have on the infant stages of the journey. Even in the short amount of time so far, there are several distinct stages that I can identify though I was largely oblivious to them at the time.

The first few weeks could best be described as disorientated. I was grappling with my complete lack of stability, routine, home, familiarity and purpose. I had a small trickle of freelance work, but not a steady job. I had no friends, events, groups or any other identity here. I’d wake up in the morning, lay in a strange bed, and have no idea what I was going to do once I finally got up. But since everything was new and fresh, I was able to keep myself distracted from having to face a lot of the confusion by walking or riding around various neighborhoods of the city.

Fortunately, two weeks after moving, I got the job where I’m still working. I only found out about it three days before I started, but the addition of that constant and the routine that came with it helped me to break out of the somewhat lethargic and purposeless state that marked the first few weeks.

The next month saw me slipping deeper into routine and comfort with the city. I became very familiar with what would become my stomping grounds – an area probably a mile squared, with my apartment sitting at the far north end. 90% of the time, I was either at work, at home, walking the mile between the two, or on Rush or State Street between Division and Chicago (about a half-mile stretch). I became a regular at two Starbucks, a Chipotle, a Walgreens and a Jewel grocery.

I’ve always been a creature of habit, and this adventure clearly hasn’t changed that. I thrive on familiarity and a certain level of predictable routine. It was only natural for me to create and hold onto as much of that as I could here where familiarity is a rare commodity.

But one of the main reasons I’m here at all was out of a desire to break out of familiarity and routine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those things, but they can turn into blinders. Since the area I’ve been frequenting makes up 0.2% of the total area of Chicago, I think it’s safe to say that’s the case here. So, with that realization and a few other factors, I feel myself moving into a new phase.

But that’s conversation for another day, I think.

We from the southern states hold a bit of a preconception that Northerners are loud, short, vulgar and unfriendly. I think New York has largely been responsible for that idea, because from what I hear, it’s absolutely true.

Chicago has been pleasantly contrary to that stereotype. In fact, most of the interaction I’ve had with people here – passerbys on the street, waiters, clerks, retail staff, co-workers, church members – has shown Chicagoans to be friendly, helpful and polite. Drivers might be the exception to that, as you can’t walk two blocks without hearing screeching tires or someone laying on their horn.

Texans also hold a bit of a linguistic assumptions about Chi-KEH-go, which also has turned out to be largely unfounded. While there are certainly some people with fairly thick northern accents, I’ve only noticed very subtle differences in the general population. Not surprisingly, when I tell people I’m from Dallas, they’re often surprised that I don’t have an accent. People! We’ve gotta break down these stereotypes!!

On the other hand, Chicago definitely is much more racially diverse than Dallas. And in that diversity, it’s much more segregated. Where Dallas has small neighborhoods and intersections that are largely hispanic, vietnamese, or indian, Chicago has sprawling neighborhoods that span several miles that are densely and predominately one race. The people, shops, street ornaments, architecture, and overall culture blend together to make little cities within the city. Well, that just doesn’t happen in Dallas.

Though the area where I live and spend most of my time is more racially indistinct – though still mostly “white” – I’ve noticed far more diversity than Dallas. Granted, I can really only judge most people on the way they speak. But sit in a restaurant or coffeeshop in the Loop, River North, or Old Town and you’re guaranteed to overhear someone with a thick jewish, italian, or eastern european accent.

It also seems like there are fewer born and raised Chicagoans than Texans (I can’t think of a word for Dallas people specifically). Most people I’ve talked with have moved here later in life, usually from elsewhere in the north or midwest. Though I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the kind of people I’m mostly interacting with: young, creative (white) professionals.

So, to answer your question, Chicago people are distinctly Chicagoan. In that they are people that are living in Chicago. I’ve still only seen a sliver of the population and culture as a whole, but so far it’s distinct in it’s non-distinction yet pleasantly familiar.

And yes, the women wear makeup.

I think this is largely because there was so much leading up to me actually driving to Chicago. There were months of planning, dreaming, praying, and preparing that were just as significant as the move itself. A month doesn’t sound right, because I’ve been “here” in this new phase of life for much longer. But that 15 hour drive? Saying goodbye to my parents, sister, friends, and home? No, no, that was just a couple of weeks ago.

If you’ve followed my trip at all, you’ve probably realized that I love Chicago. Adore it. The city is absolutely fantastic, and I would not trade the past five weeks here for anything. But Chicago itself was only part of the reason I came here. Of all the attributes of Chicago that drew me here, the most significant one was that it wasn’t Dallas. My loving family, phenomenal friends, and charming life as I knew it were nowhere near Illinois.

And for the past month, I’ve been finding my way through an unfamiliar existence surrounded by faces that I don’t recognize. That’s the bleak, adventurous journey that I expected when I looked towards Chicago. Now that I’m here though, I’m incredibly surprised to see just how quickly an exotic, urban wilderness turned into home, and people that I’d never seen before – and still haven’t had a single word to – are suddenly friendly, comforting familiarities.

I can count the meals I’ve shared with another person on one hand, I’ve seen master bathrooms bigger than my entire apartment, and I don’t know the names of more than a handful of the streets I walk down, but somehow I am home.

Of course I miss the people I love back in Dallas, but it’s different than I thought it would be. Instead of missing the people I know in Dallas because I miss their warmth and familiarity (though I have and do), I’ve mostly been wishing they were around so that I could share with them everything that I love about life here. It’s very unfamiliar for me to be experiencing so much newness and excitement and not have anyone to share it with.

But, again, that’s why I did this. To experience something new for myself away from everything I know and feel comfortable with. There will be plenty of time and opportunity to share the joy of the city later. For now, I just have to embrace and make the most of my independence.

I’m never making my bed again.

The buildings, the people, the streets, the cabs, cars, buses, trains, bars, shops, and parks. And all within a block of wherever you are at any given minute. Everything is so condensed. Communities and districts that elsewhere would be spread across a mile or more are all squeezed into a block or even a street corner. Everything is just close. Even if something on the other side of town, it feels like it’s just around the corner.

As expected, the biggest difference between Chicago and Dallas is in the way that I get around. Since I don’t have a car, I walk, take the bus, take the L, or in most cases, some combination of those. Trips happen in legs rather than one mundane stretch.

To get to my favorite coffee shop in town, I don’t jump in my car, drive for 20 minutes and park right in front. No, I walk to the red line train station, which takes exactly five minutes from when I lock my apartment door behind me. I’m usually a few minutes early, so I wait for 3-5 minutes until I feel the ground start to rumble and hear the distant scream of the train down the tunnel. Depending on the time of day, I either take a seat or stand in the crowded aisles while the train makes its way across the handful of stops before mine.

When I get off, I either walk or catch the bus for a couple of blocks before I get to my destination. From the time I left my apartment, it took me less than twenty minutes, though I was only actually traveling for 15 minutes of it, and 10 of those minutes were on a bus or train.

Since I’m either walking or standing most of the time, I tend to travel much lighter than I would if driving. Before I leave my apartment, I take a moment to figure out the bare necessities for where I’m going, and throw it into an appropriately sized bag. If I’m going to be gone all day, I might take my backpack with my laptop, notebooks, a novel or two, etc etc. But for most days, I just use a small messenger bag with a book, an umbrella, a small notebook, and an issue of Wired, Monocle or Relevant.

All in all, life in Chicago is – interestingly enough – simpler than life in Dallas. Traveling here is actually less stressful than driving. Circumstances force me to simplify what I take with me. Anything that I could need or want to see, visit, or buy is mere moments from my door. And all the time, I’m able to smell the proverbial roses of this beautiful city, because every trip takes me through the lifeblood of the city, rather than around or over it. I’m not rushing to get where I’m going, because I’m constantly enamored by the trip itself.

I’m sure a lot of it is still the novelty of a new city, but I’ve walked the same streets dozens of times already, taken the same train lines day after day, and they still aren’t boring. There’s just so much going on, so many people that there’s always something new to see, notice or appreciate.

So yeah, Chicago’s pretty cool.

In the ten minute walk to get here from my apartment, I went through three distinct neighborhoods, passed countless restaurants, bars, clubs, a Prada, Barney’s New York, four Starbucks, and about half a mile of sidewalk.

I’ve been here in Chicago for a week and a day, and I’m finally starting to get my bearings, though I can already tell that even six months won’t be enough time to fully grasp the city. But I’m going to give it my best shot.

As planned, I drove through the night last Monday, the 30th, and after a horribly long, dull and lonely 16-hour drive, I finally saw the Chicago skyline about 3:30 Tuesday afternoon.

I had no trouble finding my apartment and finally saw the room that I would call home for the next six months. At that point, the enormity and reality of what I’d done really hit me. This is home. And the home I’ve always known is 16 hours behind me. The lack of sleep had a lot to do with it, I’m sure, but I felt incredibly overwhelmed by that realization.

There’s no going back now. I’m here. This is my home. I’d taken for granted my ability to always be down the street from familiar places or friends, and now that I didn’t have that anymore, I realized just how much I needed it.

I busied myself with unpacking and returning the rental car, but I still felt incredibly unsettled and out of place. I was already thinking of ways that I could get myself back to Texas sooner than 6 months from now and not look like a total flake. Finally, at 6:30, I gave up and just went to bed alone, overwhelmed, and terribly homesick.

But even by the next morning I was feeling much better, and every day since has been even better. I walk down my street and it really is “my” street. I’m really starting to feel at home, even though I barely know the two blocks surrounding my apartment, let alone the unexplored miles of Chicago still to be seen.

I’ll save my other thoughts and observations for a later post, but for now, I’m here, and I’m finally glad about it.

All things go, all things grow.

Monday morning, I’ll pick up an SUV from Avis, drive it home, load it up with all of the stuff that I’ll be taking with me up north, and probably try to take a nap. Then around 9:00 or 10:00 Monday night, I’ll set off for the wild north. It’s about a 15 hour drive, so I’ll probably see the Chicago skyline crest the horizon around noon on Tuesday.

Lord willing, I’ll pick up the apartment keys, spend half an hour hauling all the stuff from the car to the apartment, then drive a mile downtown to Avis, drop the car off, and spend 15 minutes walking back to my new home.

The apartment I’m leasing is a total of 325 square feet. For perspective, that’s about 18.5′ x 18.5′, or a mid-sized living room. It’s a bed, office desk, bathroom, closet, small dining table and corner kitchen. I don’t even know where I’m going to set my piano up. I’m on the third floor, and I’ve got a small window that looks north over a parking lot and Division St.

The location is near La Salle Blvd. and Division St. in the Western part of Gold Coast in central Chicago. I’m a five minute walk from the beach, a two minute walk from the train station, and a 20 minute train ride from nearly anywhere in the city. There’s an Apple Store less than a mile away, and a Chipotle two blocks down the street. Life is good.

It feels less surreal than it seems like it should. I’ve been dreaming of this for a year and a half, and now that it’s finally happening, it doesn’t feel weird or risky. It just feels right. I’ve been asked countless times how I’m feeling about it. Nervous? Worried? Excited? Anxious? I’m definitely excited, but not the slightest bit nervous or worried. At this point, all of the unknowns are pretty much taken care of. I’ve got my apartment nailed down, rental care reserved, heck I’ve even scheduled the guy to come out on Wednesday and switch the internet on. Frankly, I’m more relieved to finally have an end in sight than anything else.

Beyond that, though, at this point the scariest part is saying goodbye. Saying goodbye to my fantastic friends, my amazing family, the places I’ve always known; basically saying goodbye to my life thus far. Everything else is happening so quickly that most of that is tucked away in the back of my mind, but I know it’ll be more difficult than I expect it will be. Even if it doesn’t hit me until I’m sitting alone in my Chicago apartment next week, not knowing the name of a soul within 500 miles, wishing more than anything that I could see a Texas sunset.

But that’s the nature of things. The closer I get to leaving, the bigger that part of me that wants to stay grows. Countless times over the past few weeks, I’ve just suddenly had an overwhelming moment of “I don’t want to leave” in which nothing seems to matter except that I stay right where I am. But it passes as quickly as it comes, and the clocks ticks a little bit closer to the 30th.

Ultimately, I’m just ready to be there. It’s going to be a difficult few weeks, but I’m ready to be doing it rather than thinking about it. Everything about my life will be completely different, new and unknown, but at least I will be settled somewhere for a while. I won’t be concerned with making a huge move or reaching some giant goal anymore. I’ll be concerned with trying a new coffee shop, or eating at that one restaurant, or finding the park, or learning the public transportation system.

I’m not concerned.

Similarly, you need to have some rough patches to appreciate the good. If there were no bad times, there wouldn’t be any good times, either. They’d just be… times. Its a difficult thing to acknowledge and embrace when you’re in the middle of a rough patch, though.

On the other side of things, though, when things are going well, the last thing I want to do is think about bad times. But it’s just as important to remember where you’ve been as it is to look forward to what’s ahead. You need to look back on the less than stellar times and appreciate them and how far you’ve come since.

I’m in a pretty good place right now, and the most palpable way for me to appreciate it in the midst is to remember when it wasn’t quite like this. If I only think about the here and now, I might not even realize how good I have it until I’ve moved on. And sometimes, that little mental acknowledgment is enough to promote a “time” to a “good time”.

Let them roll.

Oh young, naive Cabeeb.

For two months or longer, I had been working towards a defined, dated goal. That was to have left my job and moved out of my apartment by the time my lease was up on July 18th. That was my first destination on the larger journey up to Chicago, and I’d been working towards it since since mid-May. It was extremely stressful, but it gave some definition to my purpose. Even if everything else was a giant whirlwind, that end goal was unwavering.

Now that stage has finally wrapped up. I exited Pursuant stage-left, crammed 90% of my possessions into a 5′ x 15′ padlocked room, and moved into a temporarily vacant bedroom in my parents’ house. That all took place in one of the most hectic 4 day periods I can remember, but it was done.

Yet the week following that milestone saw me depressed and overwhelmed. Somehow, having no deadlines hanging over my head was just as stressful as the previous weeks of several simultaneously culminating. The stress was of a different nature, of course, but it was just as potent and crippling.

I knew where I needed to go – I needed to get some money saved up and enough work lined up to get me up to Chicago – but I had no idea how to get there. Instead of a million little hops that all needed to be taken nearly simultaneously, I saw before me a giant chasm and no idea the next step I should take.

So, I just started slowly chipping away at it (I’m changing metaphors here; sorry about that). Every day, I would do as much work as I could on my current freelance projects and try to get my head wrapped around all of the projects and tasks I needed to do now and in the next few weeks. My mind was a giant pile of mush, and I just couldn’t seem to get a handle on everything.

Fortunately, every day got a little better as things started wrapping up or solidifying a bit. Now, three weeks since leaving Pursuant, I finally feel like I’m in a good place. My various freelance projects have been keeping me busy, so I am financially set to actually make the move. My next step is to figure out what I’m going to do when I finally get up north, and I think that will come together before too much longer. So, I still don’t have a solid time frame, but I am definitely getting closer every day. Things could fall together tomorrow, and I’d find myself living in Chicago before next weekend.

But I’ve heard that before.