The Spring of Mild Discontent

I dip in and out of malaise.  It's a problem.

I've alluded to the fact that there's been a new man in my life.  It's a long-distance thing, which is fine.  We met the old-fashioned way, which is to say we met in a bar.  I guess it's old-fashioned because it was without the aid of online dating services or friendly set-ups.  It was really like being hit by lightning only instead of a storm-cloud, he was a drummer and instead of lightning, it was a smile.

It's all very gushy.

Anyway, it's been 9 months.  No, that doesn't mean anything except the length of time it's actually been since the moment when I, kind of bitchily, told the band in an empty bar in a town I was visiting that they should play something and the drummer zapped me with his smile.

Sometime in January or February, I made the decision to relocate from Northern Ontario to the deep south of Southern Ontario.  It wasn't a decision I made lightly because, aside from the fact that my heart is with him, everything else in Northern Ontario is kind of awesome.

I moved out of my childhood home when I was sixteen following my parents' pretty messy separation.  Since then, even when I've returned to the house I grew up in, I've never really felt like I was home.  I've stayed with my grandparents, in residence, in my Dad's apartment, in my own apartment, and even back in my childhood home, and it's never felt like I belonged somewhere since I was 16.  And then I moved here, and I finally feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be; friends are great, job is great, apartment's great, life is great.  And then lightning struck.

All of this is to say that I didn't come to the decision to relocate lightly.  It was a giant decision and involved a lot of internal flip-flopping and weighing of pros and cons.

And I'm STILL HERE.

I can't shake this feeling that I'm waiting for my life to happen.  This isn't the first time I've felt this way.  Not so very long ago, I was waiting for my life to happen so hard that the force with which I was waiting blew the part of my life I was waiting for away with the wind.

But now that I've made the decision to change towns, change jobs, change homes, make new friends, new habits, and new grocery stores, getting to do those things is more or less all I can think about.

I've tried to make some of the most ridiculous things work in my head.  I nearly took a job outside of my field with no guaranteed hours and sometimes still feel twinges of regret for not having taken it.  I find myself considering going back to school because I sometimes feel like taking a 2 year education hiatus will actually expedite this process.

I recognize that I'm playing a dangerous game.

I keep humming John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy."  I'm not saying that to tell you that my biological clock is ticking (though I must admit that my ovaries are pinging significantly more now than they were two or three years ago).  I keep recalling the line "Life is just what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."

That's the trickiest part.

I'm pretty sure the life I want is going to be pretty great.

But the life I've got in the meantime still rocks pretty hard.

I have to remember to remember that.