I haven’t liked Blink 182 since I was in high school.

Things are pretty much packed up now, needing only to be loaded onto the U-Haul truck I’ll be picking up in an hour or so. Interestingly, there’s a combination of excitement and trepidation as my official “moving day” approaches. I’ve been convinced for more than a year that leaving Michigan is the Right Call when it comes to pursuing my projected career path and opening up new horizons. It’s equal parts pragmatism and idealism – obviously there’s hardly any game industry presence in this state, which is a big factor. But there’s also a sense that leaving what I know behind will, in some ineffable fashion, bring up new challenges and opportunities that I might not even realize exist right now.

Of course, until recently that was all theory. Now I’ve got to actually make the move and, perhaps more importantly, leave behind the comfort zone of familiarity. Close friends that I’ve known for years will stay behind, and though this sort of thing has been the case ever since I started college at MTU (and studied abroad in Japan, for that matter!) this time it feels different. With school and with Japan there was always the background knowledge that I would be returning to the Novi area for a summer, or for long holidays, or whatever, and that things would, if only for a few weeks, return to old-fashioned normalcy.

I’m not afraid or even worried, at least not in the traditional sense, but then the feelings themselves are tough to pin down. Soon I’ll be in a new city and a new state, working a new job in an industry I probably don’t know as well as I think I do and performing a task for which I’m almost certainly not as prepared as I think I am.

I guess this is growing up.