On The Road Again

I am about to make a change in my life, a very big change. I am selling my house, leaving my employer of eighteen years, and moving to another province where I have accepted a new position. I am leaving behind the province where I was born and where I have spent all but three years of my life. I am leaving behind family, and many dear friends.

No big deal, right? People do it all the time - move across the continent for a job, or to go to school, or to be with a new partner. For that matter, I have done it myself many times. I've owned four houses, each in a different city, and now I'm about to buy a fifth. During my university years, I lived in countless rented digs. So why the Sturm und Drang this time round?

Well, the thing is, it is a big deal. It involves jumping off into the unknown. Right now, I am comfortable in my log house. I can walk through the house in the dark in the middle of the night and not bump into furniture. Through experience, I have discovered preferred ways of doing things and I have developed routines. For example, I have a certain way of shoveling the snow, certain favourite walks around home where I take the dogs, and I know roughly when to dig up my vegetable garden, as well as what to plant and when.

I have routines at work for each day and each season. Although I don't know specifically what will happen on any given day, most of the challenges that I deal with are fairly similar to things I have dealt with before. Basically, I'm bored. The day-to-day stuff doesn't engage me anymore, and there is little support from above to move forward with new initiatives. This is the flip side of secure and predictable - boring. Stifling, in fact. I came to the realization that if I stayed on here in this job, I would waste away. I'd become a twisted, dried up little shell of a person.

I really struggled over this decision. In fact, I think I had come close to deciding to leave four years ago, but then I met my husband-to-be, and was gloriously, happily distracted for a few years. (And I am still very happy in love; it's just that dissatifaction with my work life eventually reasserted itself.)

It will be hard to leave our friends, and although our family is a bit scattered, we'll be further away from most of them. These last few months, I have been grieving everything that we will lose. Step by step, we have been doing the things to wrap up our lives here and move on. Now as the time comes close, I am letting go and looking forward. I don't know exactly what we are going to, but it is taking shape in my imagination. We'll buy a house. We'll meet people. I'll somehow figure out how to do a new, quite different job.

Isn't that exciting!