Costa Rica Dreamin'

Seattle.

The Emerald City has been my home for the last 10 years.

Puget Sound, home to orcas, seals, and 9 million seagulls, has a chilly beauty all its own.

Glass towers compete with snowy mountain peaks to make a striking skyline.

My job is in that building, right there.  No, the other one.

Seattle has a reputation for being progressive, modern, and green – and yet the city sprawls into interminable suburbs.

Traffic falters and stops.  The 7 mile commute from home to work takes an hour.

I work in a steel and glass beehive downtown, where I report the news, shiver, and desperately guzzle bad coffee.

The eyes of strangers and co-workers alike remain downcast.

Today, the news is the same as yesterday.  The weather is the same as always – cold, wet and dark.  The cloud cover seems to have an actual weight that presses on me from every side.

I pretend to be cheery and chipper on the radio.

Ten months have gone by since it was warm enough to go outside without a jacket.

The sky, the water, the street, and my skin are all the color of wet cement.

There MUST be something better.

What would life look like if I could tell my "boss" to shove it and go be an expat in Costa Rica?

What if I did it?

What if I didn't?