Chicago

I peel out of the train station’s side exit with about 200 other people and pour into the fast moving stream of commuters on Madison ave as we all cross the bridge over the river. I keep straight for several blocks, keeping the same quick pace and unaverted gaze that only someone who walks the same path each morning could while my music blasts in my earbuds. It’s now 6:50am, and I've been awake since 5:00am. The temptation of using Uber instead of the Red Line pops into my mind, but I'm not a Rockefeller, so I take the same cross street as always past the McDonalds on Randolph and walk underneath some scaffolding that will likely be there for the rest of time. It’s still early, so it's mostly me, the homeless and an occasional few others on each street. I’m making the usual early morning work calls, calling each person on my list until someone picks up and I talk them through the tasks for the day.

Now I’m a fast walker, so by the time I’m in the Lake street Red Line subway I’m usually sweating. If it’s winter, I just trudged through icy sidewalks trying not to fall on my face, and if it’s summer I’m trying not to sweat too much as to avoid contemplating a change of clothes. Either way, I’m usually sweating by the time I get onto the platform, a reminder of the luxury of having a car. It’s now 7:05am, and 16 stops later I arrive at work around 7:40am, two hours after my first train left, and at 4:00pm later each day I do the exact same commute in reverse.

A megalopolis of steel, concrete, brick and mortar. The intersection of the modern city propped up by the older but sturdy under-layer of old town that gave the new one its hard working roots. Chicago was the wild west before the wild west at one point, and nestled itself as an economic beacon in a now tame and humble landscape. I didn’t grow up in the actual city, just the western suburbs in a small, sleepy, and quaint suburb positioned right between the dense network of suburbia and adjacent beginnings of farmland. I visited the city often as a kid, and I told myself that one day I would make it to the city and live and work there and be a star young professional living the dream.

After high school I worked my butt off to transfer from my community college to Loyola University Chicago, and finished my degree there. Fast forward to graduation, I got a job in the suburbs and moved back home to my sleepy town. As a young graduate, hungry for experiences, excitement and new challenges, this was hardly satisfactory. The place I worked at during college had a position opening up, and given that I had stayed in contact with my former employers there, I got the job. I was ambitious and determined, and at 21 years old I told myself the commute wouldn’t matter as long as I was working towards my goals. I told myself I would just do this for a few months, save some money and get an apartment.

I did this treacherous and exhausting commute of 4 hours a day for 1.5 years. I, like so many others, woke up at the crack of dawn to hop on the Metra, only to arrive and take another mode of transportation to my final destination through rainy springs, humid summers, bitter icy and snowy winters, and have the stamina to keep doing it 365 days a year. Why? Why would anybody willingly do this? Well I wanted something and went and got it, however I was 22 and I can assure you the job itself was neither financially exciting nor were the responsibilities it entirely fulfilling. However, like most 22 year olds, it was a job and just another stepping stone to get to a better job, and plenty of those were available to me in the suburbs but I chose the city for my own ambitious reasons. I craved being somewhere fast-paced,m alive, gritty, and I wanted to work. I wasn’t out here trying to be mediocre, I wanted to forge my own path and my own identity along with 3 million other working souls.

I eventually changed jobs and finally moved myself to the city a few months later. This time, my commute home to my apartment was in a car, driving past the same train line that I once had to take to get downtown. I’m not always a believer in “signs” or symbolism, but I definitely took that to be a symbol of moving on up.

As I continue to grow and move forward in my life and career, and as world changes affect our lives, I found that even if my immediate goals change, it doesn't hurt to take this crazy time to reset and recall those original ones. Why did I want that? What did I want to accomplish? Why was Chicago it for me, not New York or LA or any other city? Sometimes I think we don’t always have a logical or solid reason for wanting something, because it's more the emotion of what it represents-growth, accomplishment, identity, success, being unsure, failure, renewal, finding my way in life. My stressful college and early job experiences did not deter me, they strengthened me.

I will always call Chicago my home in my heart. Home to me is more than a place to live and the immediate comfort, and more about comfort in myself, my abilities, my goals and ambitions that keep me moving and growing. Chicago has been both what I aim for and what I would come back to. Like many others, living through the Covid-19 pandemic has forced me to re-examine and re-calibrate my career and life choices, and as I prepare to broaden my horizons by moving somewhere else entirely and push my ambitions further, the same drive and hard work that I used that got me to my dream life now will get me to my next one, and the next one. This home has been my guiding compass so far and isn't that what a home really is? Home is not always where you are, it's where and what you want to be.