Day 12- A quote you love

I'm a collector of quotes. I love how quotes can perfectly capture a feeling. I have a notebook filled with quotes, as well as a folder in my email. Sometimes if I see a quote somewhere and am unable to write it down, I will take a picture of it with my phone.

It's difficult for me to select just one quote, but here it is:

"It takes a certain, rare revolutionary spirit to abandon one's home and family, however bleak the conditions, and hurtle oneself into the unknown."- Marisha Pessl

This quote is from a book, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. The book garnered huge buzz at the time of its release, and aside from a super cool title, the book itself was only OK. I did, however, collect a number of meaningful quotes from the novel.

This particular quote is special to me because I feel like it captures the beginning of my journey to California. I decided to move to LA for acting (go figure), so I planned the move about a year in advance. I was 23 at the time and I knew exactly 1 person in LA, a college friend, so I absolutely was "hurtling myself into the unknown". Moving all the way across the country to a place I wasn't familiar with seemed like no big deal at the time, probably because it was not a unique story in a place like LA.

Looking back, though, I realize that it was a huge deal, and that's why this quote resonates with me. "Rare revolutionary spirit" is not something I thought I possessed at that age. I was (and still am) "Miss Responsibility", so a drastic move like that was out of character, in a way. It became even more clear what a huge step that was when I found out later just how many of my friends and family did not think I would actually go through with it. I finally started to see what a monumental thing I did at such a young age.

10 years later, I called upon that revolutionary spirit again when I moved back home to GA. I talked about moving home "at some point" for several years. I finally decided that 2010 was the year to do it, and once I had that in my mind, I did it. I'm not sure I would have the guts to do anything like that again, but at least I have my quote to remind me that I had that gumption not once, but twice in my life.