For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to travel. Any time I’m home, I wish to be somewhere else. Out somewhere new and distant, exploring, learning. This energizes me. Makes me feel alive. And being home with the same ole same ole same ole every day saps my energy.
Anyone that’s known me well knows that I was over living in Virginia a few years after I moved there. By 1998 I was planning my exit strategy and figuring out where to go next. But as you now know, I stayed until 2011. And much of that time was spent continuing to plan my exit strategy. And wishing I was somewhere else. I lived for my vacations and those had to feed my soul and give me energy to last me through the day to day grind which sucked it slowly back out.
Well now I’m here in Hawaii and I’m realizing I don’t want to be anywhere else. I have no desire to leave. I have no desire for a vacation to an exotic place. I’m happy to wake up where I am and happy to be in my life. And this location and this life is filling back up my soul albeit slowly. For the first time, if someone handed me plane tickets I wouldn’t even know where to go or have any desire to go any time soon. I thought that was impossible.
And now I realize how much time and energy I now have because I’m not spending so much energy wishing to be somewhere else. There is no more running into a ‘brick wall’ over and over because I’m stuck between what I want and what I can’t have. I spent so much time focusing on moving, where to move, when to move, how to convince Chuck to move, how to afford to move, would I be happy if I moved, etc etc etc that its a wonder I had any brain space left for anything else.
My word, if I’d only put that level of time and energy into something worthwhile like a business, I’d have a successful business on my hands.
I guess its like anyone that wants something so badly for so long. Like the woman who obsesses about losing weight for 10 years. Its amazing the amount of time spent thinking about it, trying to figure out how to do it, wondering why they’re not successful, beating themselves up, starting and failing, reading and learning more, etc etc etc. And then they finally lose the weight and all that energy no longer is focused on losing the weight and feeling bad, but can be spent on something else. Or at least is no longer spent on something that saps them of energy and happiness.
I feel like I’ve been given a gift to get one of the things I wanted. Not that someone handed it to me – a lot of work and planning and even some sacrifice went into this – but it still feels like a gift. One I’m not sure what to do with yet. One I’m adjusting to.
Slowly the past years of my life are crystallizing and I’m seeing things in a new light. A little more polarized. And I’m realizing I can take this brain space and do something productive with it, even if I don’t know yet what that is.
For those of you who are like me, I don’t really have all the answers about how to get the brain space back before you’ve achieved what it is you want and how to stop obsessing about what you want. Especially if something is holding you back that isn’t in your control.
The only thing I can say is, if you want something badly enough, take the energy you spend wishing you had it and apply that energy to getting it. And if you aren’t willing to put in the hard work required to get whatever you want, then it’s best to stop obsessing about it. Because anything worth getting in life comes with hard work.
But sometimes patience is just what’s needed. Realizing what brick walls you can tear down and which brick walls you’re going to run into over and over and exhaust and frustrate yourself.
In a strange way, I feel like taking a month long nap to recover for what I’ve mentally put myself thru the past 12 years.
I am excited though to finally make peace with this and finally feel like I’m where I belong. I’m excited for the change to my peace of mind, to my soul and to my attitude. And I’m excited to see what productive, helpful thing I can do with all that newfound energy.
Photo By Oliver Stollmann