Today is a travel day for me. I'm driving from Champaign back to Detroit, about six hours, to spend a few days conducting interviews, checking in with editors, reassuring clients and assessing the progress of my new Web site, coming soon to an Internet near you. It's a round trip I take at least once a month.
Detroit is a rush of mixed emotions for me now. It's the city of my greatest victories and my naughtiest iniquities, the place where I became a man, the location where my career soared and swooned. For so many years, it was home. My residence now, in central Illinois, is as far removed from the Motor City as the east is from the (Mid)west. And in the few months since I've relocated, many acquaintances from Detroit and elsewhere have said something to the effect of, "So! You decided to move to small-town Illinois and leave your wild, flamboyant life behind, huh? Huh? Huh?"
While that was not the reason behind my address change, my simple response to them all is, "Yeah." I am far closer today to retirement age than drinking age. I spent my formative young adult years as the rock music critic in the home of Motown, Seger, Nugent and Aretha, writing for the largest evening newspaper in America at the time. I had the coolest job in America, if I say so myself. I sowed so many wild oats, I should buy a couple of acres around my new house. And if you're going to sow 'em, I say do it young, do it till you're satisfied and, if you survive, sit your butt down somewhere and cherish the memories. Cherish mode now.
I'm sublimely happy and calm in my new surroundings, and I believe my best writing is yet to come. Welcome to my Walden phase. I was saying the other day that I still get a rush of excitement when I return to Detroit, but I predict there'll soon come a day when I arrive and can't wait to escape the noise and tumult of the metroplex to return to my little nest amid the cornfields. When that transition arrives, I truly will have more than a new address. I will have a home.
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