Starting over — meaning moving place, entering new relationships, finding a job — is routine now. After six moves in five years, the logistics of starting over are easier, my possessions whittled down to a five-by-ten storage unit containing who-knows-what, its contents a mystery, along with my mindset on what to discard or keep fifteen months ago. I spent the last several months starting over as I traveled, looking for friends (sometimes with success, most times not), keeping a routine adaptable to any place, wondering if each destination was my place, the home I need, the sticking place. I found it, but I have not found the way to make it happen. So…I begin again, moving back to Portland with the conviction of making it work this time, because it is familiar and because my stuff is here.  I have a plan. I always have a plan.

Conventional wisdom, retirement advisors, and self-help gurus agree on the necessity of a plan for moving forward. For three decades I had an idea of how things would look at this moment, a plan, like most plans, based on fingers crossed and faulty data, because like most plans, it worked well in the short-term and imploded in the long-term. It can be argued that planning is futile. A plan is just an invitation for disappointment. And pretty much since I returned to the U.S. with a migraine headache, my pain starting at Heathrow and ending two days later, I have struggled to envision my next ‘starting over’.

Since that landing I have visited family and friends from California to Texas. Seattle. Boise. Salt Lake City. Moab. San Antonio. Most of the last few months I have spent in San Francisco, a place of refuge and grandchildren, but also a place to hide away where I found myself trying to recreate those three decades, experiencing regret and knowing there was never a guarantee, even with the most detailed plans. My days as a computer programmer should have prepared me for disruption. There will always be an unanticipated glitch.

Those glitches happened quickly. Another two-day migraine, a headache that began on moving day, lasting another two days without the help of pain killers or my usual sick food. A family emergency right after I signed a year lease. I might have made a different decision about where I live if it had happened the week before I moved.

My best friend came post-headache for our semi-annual retreat of wine, advice, and movies. She has helped me christen each new place from Astoria to Oxford, listened when the new relationships ended, and was with me in the mall when I learned of the latest crisis. She measured the windows for curtains. She gave me a pink hammer in a sparkly hot pink bag, a hammer I used to put up curtain rods, its slim handle smooth in my hand as its head whacked my unsuspecting thumb.

My friend crawled into her place, beside her man in a truck with a camp trailer behind it, to head back to their desert home. She reminds me how the world is my neighborhood. Even though my touchstones are not around the corner, they are out there, my friends and family, and even though I feel like I am alone again, I realize there are many friendships waiting to be made here in Portland. These days, a year is an eternity. I’ll hang the curtains and paintings; I’ll assemble the IKEA furniture. Each box I open reveals what my plan was a year ago. I can’t remember why I have a single wineglass and six cheese knives. I packed two crockpots, but not the sugar bowl. Furniture is sparse. After six years, I retrieved my maple table from Utah. That, with four folding chairs and my bed, is all the furniture I saved.

I have been called irresponsible. I have been praised for being adventurous. The truth is I am lucky in circumstance. I cannot predict my future and I must try not to worry about it. Like most people I will plan with what I know at this moment, making the best decision for now. My plan is to make a home out of the mishmash, a home that will last at least a year. Beyond that? It’s a mystery. Maybe I’ll find the next plan in one of these boxes.