The valley of the shadow of success

Who doesn't feel the lure of the small town?  I hear it in the early morning, underneath the nearby freeway, garbage trucks, and construction equipment.  I hear it at 4:30 on the 405.  I hear it when all roads to nature involve noise, cars, people and congestion.

I love a small town.  A single blinking 4-way, small businesses lining quaint blocks, the diner where the waitresses know everyone and call you "hon," the library with its story lady and clusters of schoolchildren, neighbors who know you by name.  

I've lived in cities most of my adult life (Boston, New York, Los Angeles) and have rarely known my neighbors.  Even now, I've lived in this building for 12 years and only recently started talking to the people around me.  Part of me really loves anonymity, the going about of my own business without accountability for my routine.  

I hate the idea of people all up in your business.  In fact, I hate it so much, the most successful relationship of my life was with a man living 3,000 miles away.  All the time in the world for me without having to really accommodate someone else.  (I grew up with a father who was all about the crowding, so I've swung perhaps a little far the other way...)

So it's with a certain amount of startle that I realize not only do I want a quieter life, but I want one of greater community and connectedness, I want people around me to know me, to stop me in the street, to pop over.  (OK, maybe not pop over, but you know, be within calling distance of coming by.)

This is the biggest question of the past few months:  How do I change my life?  How do I shift my focus from work/career (the centerpiece of my life for 24 years) to family/friends/relationships/meaning/home?  How do I make work the snapshot in the frame of my life instead of the picture in the middle?

I read stories about this in More and O, but they seem to always leap from "I was a big city book editor and now I raise chickens" without dwelling on the messiness of, "So all I had was $13K in the bank and no idea of employment, but I made the leap, and for the first six months it was very messy, but then things started to turn around and suddenly I had blue ribbon chickens and a new life."  

It's the valley of the shadow of these successes that I want to know about.  Leaps of faith I can get behind, I guess what I really want, though, is an informed leap.

I hear my town a-callin' -- how do I answer?