Leaving & Returning

Were you one of the Millennials that were conditioned to think Spokane and the surrounding areas was a place to leave? Not enough opportunity here? Not enough to do?

Now, are you one of the many Millennials now coming back home to start and raise their own families? Why the draw back home? Why leave in the first place?

Or even more interesting, were you one of the Millennials that never saw reason to leave?

Conditioned to Go

Content to Return

Grateful for Home

Here to Stay

Conditioned to Go

Who were you during high school? I was the quiet over achiever. I was never the perfectionist in school, never studied enough to ace each test, never properly edited essays, never got all A's, but I wanted to "succeed". What that looked like to my teenage self? Attend college outside of Spokane, graduate, and then move to a different city. Why?

This might be me projecting, or maybe you're still reading because you can relate.

What drove this deep desire to leave Spokane? Over a decade later and I still can't pinpoint the "why". My best guess is falling into the "fast track" to "succeed" and "be something".

Here is your check list for life:

• Do well in school.

• Attend more school.

• Earn a degree.

• Find a well-paying career.

Check, check, and check ... and kind of check.

How can all the boxes be checked and still feeling inadequate?

Chasing the idea of being something rather than content being a someone.

Content to Return

Have you heard it is okay to jump from interest to interest, from hobby to hobby, and even from job to job in your early twenties? It is even expected for human development. I didn't know that! I thought I had to have my life figured out immediately after college, if I wanted a promising future. What unrealistic expectations and a bunch of malarkey.

Following the most tracked path opened an unexpected door for me, and ironically it was the first choice I took that didn't equate to checking a box. After college I took an internship with the National Park Service in Boston. At the time this felt like taking a step backwards, but it afforded me so many different experiences and life lessons, and without it I wouldn't have been granted my other post career opportunities.

I thrived in Boston and felt like I became my own person there. It is a place I still love, and I cannot wait to share with my family, but I can tell you the exact moment when I realized I missed home, I missed family, I missed traditions - I missed Spokane.

Grateful for Home

We've probably all heard the saying; you don't know what you have until it's gone. When I was away at school and at my internship, I learned more about Spokane than I ever did when I lived there. My interest in my own hometown was peaked, and when I returned, I was returning to the comfort of the familiar while experiencing it a whole new. I was seeing Spokane through the lens of my own interests and as my own person.

It is both comical and a clique to say, you leave home looking for a place fit in, only to realize you belonged all along.

Maybe it takes checking off a few of those status quo boxes to realize you don't fit into the box. Maybe it takes exposure to the new to find connections to the old. Maybe it takes a jumble mess of your twenties, to find security in your thirties. Maybe it's bigger, maybe it takes watching your own kid's free spirit and enthusiasm for the little moments you experienced as a child, to realize how deep your roots run and how much you cherish them.

Here to Stay

"Garbage Goat & Kid" is a love letter to Spokane and to the place my kids will one day call their own.