With the upcoming move foremost on my mind these days, I’m mulling over a conversation Alison and I had with some good friends earlier this week.

They were asking us, in mentor fashion, why we are moving to Pittsburgh. We had just outlined several of the difficulties inherent in the move, all of the unknowns and the risks we are taking. I suppose we must have painted a fairly bleak picture, because their response was an eyebrow-raised “So…why are you moving?”

And perhaps it was because we were with a very mature, older couple, but for some reason my knee-jerk response was to be completely dishonest. I don’t mean out-and-out lying, exactly. But I started giving all these lofty, noble exaggerations of why we’re moving. Reasons that are absolutely part of our desire to move, but nowhere near the main impetus. “Well, you see, we have this unquenchable passion for herons, and we’re going up there to rescue Pittsburgh’s rapidly diminishing heron population.” “We have our hearts set on adopting at least 15% of Pittsburgh’s orphan population.”*

I didn’t notice the growing discomfort on the faces of our friends as we outlined the (grossly aggrandized) selfless nobility in our moving apologetics. Finally, though, honesty reared its hideous head and I said, “Really, we just want an adventure.”

Our friends breathed a sigh of relief.

These, in my opinion, are very good friends. They were convinced that moving to have an adventure was a much healthier reason than moving to rescue orphans or enlist in the Pittsburgh Peace Corps.

Not that selfless, servant causes are poor excuses to make a big move! The real issue here is honesty. I was homilizing all these exaggerations of why we want to move, only because I felt pressure (internal, no doubt, and perceived external pressure) to have some Mother Theresa motivation for making this big change. But, honestly, what I want most is an adventure. And with that adventure I foresee all sorts of growth, serving opportunities, humbling events, challenges, and life lessons. But it is the newness, the expedition, the “undiscovered country” that most compels me.

And maybe adventure really is a lame reason. But it’s the real reason.

*These are fictional accounts. Any resemblance to an actual reason given is purely coincidental.

As all four of you already know, Alison and I are soon abandoning the seasonally monotonous Florida for the temperament melting pot of Pittsburgh.

There are many reasons for our move, to be sure, but a massive one for me is the aching hunger to once again live in a place with seasons. Sharply delineated, blustery, passionate, gloriously dissimilar seasons. I grew up looking forward to each season in Colorado, savoring each autumn and then slowly experiencing an increasing appetite for the chill of winter. But, as with most things we take for granted, I didn’t appreciate the true glory of seasons until I came to a place without them.

The most obvious benefit of spring, summer, fall, and winter are the different weather types and characteristics of nature unique to each one. Spring is such a welcome, verdant thaw to the bleakness of late winter. Summer really gets things cooking, and there’s nothing better than driving with the windows down and film music cranked up on a pleasantly sunny day. Fall takes the edge off summer and the leaves off the trees, putting a deliciously pumpkin hue on the world and a crisp breeze in the air. Winter brings romantic snowfall, holidays, and an excuse to sip hot drinks and wear warm clothes (and, let’s face it, we all look better in warm clothes). These benefits are huge, and almost feel like they’re out of a storybook to a kid living in a state perpetually stuck on “Stifling.”

But the other thing I love about seasons is their cyclical partitioning of life in general. This was more overtly true when I was in school—when autumn smelled like no. 2 pencils, winter meant Christmas and two delirious weeks without homework, spring came in through the classroom window like a distraction, and summer meant break, break, break. But seasons are a vital part of every healthy life. (I think of Ecclesiastes’ “a time for everything” passage.) The sun, moon, and tides of the ocean give silent affirmation that life functions well on a cycle. There are seasons of hard work and seasons of relaxation. There are seasons of grief and seasons of euphoric joy.

Just like nature runs on a cycle with repeated, identifiable features, we transition through different phases at different times. These phases are healthy and necessary; the variety gives spice to life while the repetition of the seasons lends a comfort and safety. Laughter is born out of sorrow; pain gives joy its searing pleasure.

These human seasons transpire regardless of whether the leaves turn orange or Christmas actually yields a “winter wonderland.” But I have found that my internal/emotional seasons are aided and complemented by similar changes in the outside air.

Three weeks from today, I will start chapter three of What’s the Wurst That Could Happen?: The Tim Greiving Chronicles (based on a true story).

Chapter one opened on a snowy December day in Denver, Colorado. It told of a young boy, born to the hardworking son of German immigrants into a life of prosperity and healthy alternatives to brand-name soda. Young Timothy overcame great odds (such as premature astigmatism, homeschooling, and a proclivity for sweatpants), and grew up to become a lanky, mane-haired youth with aspirations to be the next Peter Parker—or Michael Jackson, depending on the day.

Chapter two saw Tim leaving the comforts of his country home, and attending college at a small liberal arts school in the swamplands of Florida. There his esoteric, mildly amusing gaucherie won him the coveted positions of sophomore class president and traffic inventory specialist at DKS Transportation Solutions. It was in this chapter that Tim, while playing the part of Perchik in a production of Fiddler on the Roof, first laid eyes on the adorable blonde who he would eventually marry and whisk off to an internment camp for revolutionaries in Siberia.

Which brings us to chapter three, wherein Tim and Alison pull up (resistantly protracted) stakes from the marshes of Florida and embark on a two-day voyage to the land of three rivers: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What new adventures await them in this mysterious and once soot-covered city? What horrors lurk beneath the gossamer ice of unemployment? Will they finally doff the shackles of bureaucracy and expose the government’s century-long coverup of the existence of extraterrestrial life?

Tune in next week (well, actually, August 7th or so) for the thrilling continuation!

There must be two kinds of writers. There is what I’ll call the “napkin scribbler,” the writer whose mind is a constant frenzy of activity, stories, and thoughts. Their brain is like a creative faucet of epiphanies and plot ideas. They experience life and relationships primarily as material for their writing. They’re slightly neurotic and they carry this sense of “I have to write. I have no other choice!” Writing is, for them, a vocation of destiny.

And then there’s me.

I enjoy writing. I love putting thoughts together with words, and trying to do so in fresh and humorous ways. I enjoy writing a speech or a talk I’m going to give; I love writing articles about and analysis of film music. I like being given an assignment, preferably one with some humanity or vitality to it, and doing the work of “putting it down on paper,” as it were.

But I am not driven by some unquenchable thirst for writing. I don’t have sudden brainstorms where I desperately look for the nearest napkin to jot down my revelation. I don’t have fictional characters trotting about and jousting mythical creatures inside my head. There’s no creative faucet I have to force myself to shut off.

I just enjoy writing, and—when I come right down to it—in a really dull, utilitarian way. Not that my writing is dull and utilitarian (I guess you should be the judge of that); on the contrary, I try to bring the aforementioned freshness and humorousness to everything I write (with the exception of, maybe, obituaries). But I lack the crazed hunger for writing and the seemingly endless wellspring of material that marks the first kind of writer.

Don’t get me wrong; despite my slightly insulting description of the former, I actually really wish I was one of them. I have to force the ideas to come, which some days is like trying to force a stillborn puppy through a drinking straw. Whereas the other kind of writer has ideas gushing out 24/7 like oil out of a broken well cap, I have to go down to the proverbial idea gas station and pump someone else’s proverbial fuel into my literal mind.

But until I have that Damascus road moment where I’m struck blind and suddenly gifted with a relentless passion for writing, I’ll continue to plug away in my dull, utilitarian way. And maybe that’s okay; maybe it really does take all kinds to make this crazy world go ‘round.