Up and Down and All Around

Monday morning meetings...will I miss this?

A weird thing happened to me this morning. And it's the second time it's happened in the span of a couple months. I woke up, and the first, the very first thing I thought, was that I am 34, in 6 years I'll be forty, that my life is at best, a third over, that in 16 years I'll be 50. And what will I have accomplished?  I almost felt like I was another person observing myself. It was kind of terrifying. As I woke up more, the frank truth of the state of things faded to it's normal mildly alarming state, but...geez.

It occurred to me that starting a new "career" whether it be house flipping, or whatever now may not be a good idea. It might not be the "smart" thing to do. I feel like I’ll blink and then suddenly be forty and….what if this gamble doesn’t pay off? What if I can’t make ends meet? What if this is my one chance for a career and I blow it? I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying it probably should have been sorted out 5 years ago. I'm saying I'm probably 5 or 10 years behind anyone else doing whatever it is I want to do. Except at my current job. There I am right on track. I started that "career" at the right time, and I'm at the right place for my age.  

In my half asleep assessment of my life that seemed like the best thing going for me. Steady, good paying job with benefits, and manageable hours. Not too stressful either. And for the most part not too hard. That has me feeling really confused at the moment since my job has been the thing I'm feeling the most excited about getting out of! Maybe that shouldn't be the case though. Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong?  I know it's a great job, but I keep telling myself it's not what I want to do (and it's not), but then in the larger picture, of my whole life and all that other scary crap I was thinking about this morning, it suddenly seems like the best option I have. You always hear people say "you don't know what you have till it's gone." I don't think that would apply to me and my job, but then why did it seem so good for that split second before I was totally awake?

Anyway, that has got me thinking. Sure moving would be an adventure, and I am ready for that. But there will be a lot more stress, and tough decisions, and unknowns involved. And this morning in my dazed semi-consciousness  it just seemed crazy that I'd trade my job, and our quaint life here, for that. But is it really?

Ha. I'm up and down everyday. Maybe it's good that I am going to France for a week. Maybe being there will give me some perspective that I can't get when I'm in the middle of it here.

*It’s a little bit later now, and I am feeling better.  I was in the mood to clean, so I decided to take advantage of that and go through some of the more daunting cleaning projects. I went through all the drawers of the desk, and the back closet (minus my holiday stuff). Eduardo did some cleaning of his own.

It feels so good to get rid of things. I don't know why I don't do it more often!. I am the kind of person who tends to hold on to things a little too tight, especially when I am feeling nostalgic or sentimental (both of which happen from time to time). And I get bogged down in all of it both emotionally and physically. And the older I have gotten the worse it has become. I have no idea why though. Most of the time I am not even aware of it, but then I'll suddenly notice something I have had forever and realize I stopped liking it about 10 years ago. Then I am forced to ask myself then why in the hell do I still have it laying around? Why is it so hard to get rid of? I almost feel like after a certain number of years you can't get rid of things, like they have somehow acquired tenure or something and can't be tossed out. But that is not true, and the more I hold on to stuff, the more I feel like I'm facing the wrong way, focusing on the wrong direction.  

I used to almost exclusively look ahead, but that hasn't been the case the last few years, and maybe that's another reason why I am so ready to move. I want to look forward again, and that's hard to do right now when nothing scares me anymore, and there are no unknowns waiting for me tomorrow, and no challenges to pit myself against. How can I even tell what sort of person I have become when the biggest choices I make in a week are where to go for happy hour? That's what I feel is at stake if I keep my job. I'll never know what kind of person I am...or maybe I would? Maybe staying, if we decide not to move, will tell me exactly who I am. And right now I'm more afraid of being that person than making the mistake of quitting.That is why I feel like I need to quit and go. Because that is what the person I want to be would do.

But now I'm getting a little too philosophical, and I am too tired for that right now. Sufficed to say,

it's all very confusing. Anyway, my excitement about moving, or the possibility of it, got me in the mood to get rid of the old, and make way for the new! I see my stuff differently in the light of a possible move across the country. There are some things I certainly want to take. But I'm realizing that a lot of the stuff I've dragged around Florida and then California, I'm ready to finally part with. I don't want to go to start the next chapter of my life knee deep in the last 10 years. It's time to move on.