I just finished reading Eric Brende's Better Off, an account of the 18 months he and his wife spent living in a remote community completely off the grid.
As is usual, reading about the rural experience elicited vague feelings of restlessness. My endless country mouse, city mouse conundrum reared its head again. We moved to Austin with designs on settling down for good. I'm frittering away hours looking at real estate online. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place. Perhaps a small urban bungalow isn't what I really want. Maybe I'm just used living in cities, so I think that's what I want.
And then, I got to the epilogue, where I learned that Eric and his wife moved away from their idyllic self contained community and back to a more urban neighborhood. This sentence in particular, resonated:
"The urban core is the only place sprawl cannot touch."
And just like that, it hit me. I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here, where I can walk or ride my bike to everything I need. Maybe one day, I'll be in the position to buy a couple of acres on which to build a straw bale weekend house, or cultivate a food forest to camp out in, but for the most part, the city is where I want to be.