Welcome to Minnesota, Population: Three

“Three? Just Three? Three what?”

You know, I was going to title this post “Hello Minneapolis” or something like that and riff on the opening to “That 70’s Show,” but why would I do that when I can take an approach that makes slightly less sense and is more self-centered? Also, who still watches “That 70’s Show” anyway? I never even really watched the thing in the first place. Is it still relevant? What is the cultural mindspace that the show, and other sitcoms like it, take up? Will they be remembered in the future? Will they die out when their original audience no longer takes an interest and/or dies off? Why does the Big Bang Theory still exist? These are questions I ask myself when I think about television and media in general. But that’s not the point of the blog today.

The point of this blog, instead, is to offer a sort of update on my existence. Where I am, who I’m with, why I’m there, and all that sort of stuff. Of course, it’s a little late in coming, because I felt I had to really get settled into a place before I could do an explanation of why I’m there. I really had to get the feel for it, you know? Which is one way of saying that I waited to write this until I got a job so I’d have more to say than just “I live in Minnesota now, hurray!”

And good thing I did, too! Fun fact, I’m writing this blog from my job. Is that in my contract? No, definitely not. Is that what I usually do? No, this is kind of a one-time thing. Is it a neat perk? Hell yeah it is. I’m writing a blog post from a one-room cabin in the woods about a half-hour west of Minneapolis, and technically being paid to do it because I’m on call for the day but don’t have any strict responsibilities at this moment. I never thought I’d be doing that, but as someone who wants to dig and hole in the ground and live under some moss, this is the dream.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself here. I realize that I haven’t exactly done a life update before, or in this case, I suppose you could call it a quality of life update. See, there’s some sort of joke in there about software development, but, uh, let’s skip that for now. Come to think of it, though, I haven’t really ever actually explained where I live or why on this blog before, explicitly in a post just about that. Except for, like, maybe at the beginning, way back in 2018. I assumed for so long that everyone reading this is someone who knows me personally, and yeah, most of you are, but I do get more page hits than just people on Facebook now! SEO works, I guess. But gosh, it’s been more than three years now that I’ve had this thing. Crazy! Because back in 2018, I was a student at the University of Illinois, studying environmental science and creative writing, and I was still that student up until May of this year, 2021. That’s when things changed, really. And now, things are so different! For tons of reasons that I do not need to explain here. Crazy, isn’t it, how time goes by?

So, yeah. I was born in Illinois, grew up there, went to school there, had a loving childhood and adolescence with two wonderful parents and an amazing brother, made friends, had some issues with high school, you know the drill. I studied at the University of Illinois for four years, joined a club, made more friends, really developed myself, fell in love, got stuck inside for months on end, and then, finally, I graduated. It seemed as if my entire life had been leading to that moment, the moment when I’d finally get that goofy piece of paper and be an official college graduate, with my whole life ahead of me and the sudden responsibility of being a real adult. And, to a certain degree, my entire life had been leading there. But then there I was, I found myself at that moment, and then I looked around and thought to myself, “huh, what the hell do I do now?”

My life had a very clear path up ’til college graduation, and I think a lot of recent graduates in general can relate to this, but suddenly that clear path had ended. It’s like that one song sung by the nasally janitor from the DMV; “where do we go now?” I had some plans, sure, things I’d been working on, prepping for. Some plans were grand and beyond realistic reach, and some were specific and attainable. But I still got to graduation and realized that I wasn’t sure I wanted either of them. Or didn’t want to give up one in favor of the other. Remember when I wanted to go to grad school? Yeah, me neither. And COVID threw a left-handed monkey wrench in everything, too. It now felt, and still feels, impossible to properly plan for the future. I was supposed to study abroad. I’m still trying to apply for a Fulbright scholarship. I’m eventually going to live in a country other than the United States for at least three months. But when? How? Where would it be? Graduation snuck around from behind a corner, sticking me with a knife and asking me these questions, and I could do nothing but shrug and go “I dunno.”

So, in this new virus-addled world, I had a few possible options. I could take a gap year and live with my parents? Maybe, but that’s more an emergency backup. I could jump straight into grad school and spend thousands of dollars on something I may or may not be fulfilled by? Seems like a risky investment. I could try and find an average-paying bachelor’s degree job, work forty hours a week, get my own place, be a responsible adult, and save money until I die? Tempting, but maybe later. Or, I could move to Minnesota to mooch off my girlfriend and/or parents for no apparent long-term benefit. Bingo!

I’m being facetious, of course; I’m not a complete bum. And there are lots of reasons I ended up in Minnesota. Well, two, actually. The first one, and the reason that kickstarted the whole chain of events that led me to write this in a cabin in the woods alone, is that my brother, Nick, graduated from community college this may, too, and decided to transfer to the University of Minnesota. He was finally ready to undergo metamorphosis into a Gopher. And we always felt it would be really cool to move to a new city together and be nearby to hang out and explore and stuff. I had some extra money from my college funds, and I’d already decided to take a gap year anyway before (the possibility of) grad school, so I started making plans to move to Minneapolis. I had somehow talked my girlfriend, Cheyenne, into considering moving to Minnesota , too. But here’s the fortuitous part; she’s worked at Target for three years, and Target’s headquarters are in Minnesota. So she started applying to Target jobs in Minnesota through her HR department and landed one in Target’s very first distribution center. But you want to know the kicker? It was a step up. Not one, but two steps up. She now had a big-pants overall-strappin’ job where she would manage around forty people. And we were gonna live together. I may have put Minnesota in her head, but let’s be real; I followed her here.

So, she moved here in July to start her new job, and I was off doing dog-knows-what, and then I moved up in August a little bit later. And the transition was a little rough, sure; moving happened in, effectively, three separate trips. One of which, thankfully, included a U-Haul truck driven by my father and, presumably, a six-hour playlist of Weird Al and live Phish albums. Unpacking wasn’t done for at least a month, once we got into our new place. I was a little nervous to move into our apartment because the model we visited smelled like a garbage truck, but, luckily, our new place turned out really great. I’d previously lived in my parent’s suburban home, then shitty, vaguely arrogant college dorms for two years (at least I had a good roommate the second time), then a hunting lodge in New Mexico, then a cooperative housing setup (that I loved, by the way, highly recommend co-op housing), then a rental house just off my campus that I shared with three other people, one of which was my partner. Now, I was moving to an apartment in Minneapolis, which felt like a step down compared to having our own house (with roommates and a dog, admittedly), but honestly, that last house was kind of balls and it’s a huge step up from the dorms. Our apartment is nice and the outlets only spark some of the time. I’ll take the two flights of apartment stairs over dog hair any day of the week, too. Sorry, Seven. No offense. (Editor’s note: Seven is the dog’s name. Not the house’s.)

So we moved in, Cheyenne went to work, Nick went to school, I sat around doing shit-all, I busted my ass falling down the stairs in the first month, I went on a lot of runs around the very nice park across the street, I worked on some writing projects, and then I said, “Wait a minute, I can’t afford rent like this!” which was something you’d assume I had considered previously. I had not. And so my job hunt began. I applied for as much as I could get my hands on, and by that, I mean I applied for a handful way above my experience level (aim high, right?) and a boxful of entry-level stuff that I could get signed onto quickly, use to pay the bills, and not feel bad about leaving after my gap year was done (or so I thought; more on that later).

Turns out living next to that very nice park across the street held an additional blessing besides being a neat place to go for runs and play Pokemon Go. As it happened, the park is a part of the Three Rivers Park District, which is less a park district in the traditional sense and more a weird, frightening amalgamation of state, county, and city natural resources jurisdiction that, in terms of governance, laughs in the face of the clean, simple county forest preserve districts of Illinois. That thing must be an absolute pain in the ass to wrangle in the state capitol. Or maybe not, I can’t say anything about it because they employ me! Hurray!

I actually ended up finding the perfect job with the Three Rivers system, as a seasonal naturalist. So now, not only do I get to work in the woods all day, spend my weekends in a cabin, and tell kids all about how to play with matches, I get paid for it! That’s all shit I did for free before! And not only that, it’s seasonal to boot; now I don’t have to worry about the awkward tensions of quitting when my gap year is up. They just fire me instead! It’s like the perfect job, and future Andy can suck it because now he’s the one who has to figure out long-term income, so hah.

For legal reasons, I am (obviously) being hyperbolic. I really, really like my job, and I think that the Three Rivers Park District is doing such great work in the area. Not to mention they are a huge parks system, which is pretty impressive. They have so many cool parks and put on a ton of neat programs, and I feel like the park I work at is especially cool. At my park, we put on educational programs for youths about things like wilderness survival, archery, snowshoeing, the whole gamut. We teach a lot of school groups and scout groups, and do overnight programs where kids stay in cabins (hence why I’m in a cabin right now), and everyone I’ve talked to has said that our particular park has some of the best outdoor education in the area, and I’m super proud to be a part of that. And I’m not just saying this because my boss could be reading this, either, I promise. I’m not a particularly large or integral part of the park, of course, but I teach the kids sometimes (more than just matches, too), and I think I’m decent at it. For those of you wondering, yes, I can keep my sailor’s mouth and proselytizing in check long enough to interact with children without frightening or attempting to convert them. But anyway, I doubt they’d offer me any sort of additional position once my season is over, besides maybe an expedited application for the summer season, but I’d definitely like to keep working with them. If I can afford it, that is. Financial stability is a constantly-moving objective that I have yet to achieve. Second job, here I come.

But other than that, Minneapolis is pretty dang cool! The city is really pretty, and the river is neat, and the state parks are awesome. I’m a big fan of the state parks hiking passport. Cheyenne and I got to go to the north shore of Lake Superior not too long ago, and explore the city of Ely and also Tettegouche state park. I’ve been to Ely before, but it’s a much easier drive from Minneapolis than the Chicago suburbs. Plus the parks are just a higher quality overall here in MN than they are in Illinois. Nick and I have been hanging out a lot, which is a ton of fun. The chain of lakes part of the city is really nice, and we’ve found this amazing Chinese restaurant, plus like three really good pizza places. And we’ve been to see the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota (made by one man), marking the second Weird Al-themed attraction I’ve seen this summer. Oh, and don’t sleep on St. Paul; it’s called the Twin Cities for a reason, and St. Paul is just as pretty of a city, if not prettier, as Minneapolis. I’ve been meaning to spend more time over there. So far, it’s just been for (entirely legal) protests and a gypsy punk concert, but then again, who’s counting? One of these days I’ll go more in depth on what I’ve done in Minnesota so far, and how it compares to Illinois, but not today. I’ve felt the Minnesota snow now, though! It’s snowing as I type this!

I think that’s about it for now, though. I think that’s a pretty solid life update post-graduation! I moved to a whole new state, six hours from my home town, with my brother and my partner (hence the Population: Three, by the way. If I need to explain my own jokes, they aren’t very good). I’ve moved into an apartment north of Minneapolis, and I’ve gotten a job with the local park district so I can teach kids to safely run in the woods. I’ve been to new state parks and seen a new city. Cheyenne is in a whole new role as an operations manager for Target, and she’s doing really well at it (even if she won’t say it herself). Nick is almost finished with his first semester at the University of Minnesota, and from what he’s told me he’s gonna finish the semester out strong. Looks like we’re all doing well! It’s a new stage in life, and it’s a little scary and intimidating, but we’re navigating through it in this confusing world we live in.

I have no clue what the future holds for me. Nick will be here until he graduates, and Cheyenne and I will probably be here for at least another year from right now, but where I go from there is up in the air. I am waiting to hear back from the Fulbright committee about whether or not they’re gonna pay me to go to India and study climate change, but I won’t know about that until March 2022 at the very earliest. But dog only knows what the world will look like with this Omicron shit rolling around. But once I figure it out, I promise that you, dear reader, will be the fifth to know. Maybe the fourth. We’ll see what happens.