> Has anyone just picked up and moved because you like the new place
as opposed
> to moving for a job or to be near family? How did you decide where
to go?
I was born & raised in Keokuk, Iowa which is as far south in Iowa as
you can go. It is on a little tip of the state that sticks down from
the southeast corner between the Des Moines & Mississippi rivers. I
spent 6 years in Cedar Falls Iowa which is right next to Waterloo in
the north central part of the state. While attending the University
of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, I majored in Theatre with the dream
of being an actor. I met many crazy & wonderful people while there.
After leaving college some of them moved to Minneapolis. One of those
that went there was the man I was living with at the time. We had
been having a sort of love affair while we lived together, but he
wanted to live by himself once he left Iowa and I didn't feel that it
was a good idea to follow him to Minneapolis. Another friend had
moved to Seattle. She was trying to break into the theatre there. I
had never been to Seattle but couldn't stay in Iowa. I had to get
out. So in August of 1978 I packed my life into another dear friend's
car & we set out for the great northwest, stopping in Cedar Falls &
Minneapolis on the way.
To make a long story short, my friend who was living in Seattle needed
to get her teeth fixed so she needed a steady job. I was much too
insecure to audition around Seattle but I did fall in love with the
place. So my friend is married with two kids (she married the guy we
shared a house with when I first moved here, somebody she met on that
job she took to pay for her dental work) and I live in Shoreline
Washington which is directly north of Seattle. Neither one of us ever
broke into the theatre although I appeared in two plays for fly by
night theatre companies back around 1981 or so when I was drawing
unemployment. Somehow it wasn't as much fun as it was in college & I
found I lacked the ambition & discipline it took to make a go of it.
So I'm a desk jockey. There's more to the story but I believe that's
all that was called for (and more than most of you wanted to know, I'm
sure).
Mark in Seattle
