The Need for Major Change

Where does it lead? I don’t know but I might like to go there.

Someone I know recently just picked up and moved to Chicago to pursue a dream of theirs and I couldn’t help but admire her greatly for it … and it got me thinking, as more and more people do that sort of thing, or as I become more aware of it anyway … that I’ve got all this education, all these tools, and my fair share of potential … and I’ve never really taken any chances like that. I’ve never gone someplace new, thrown myself into the proverbial fire … never tempered the steel of my resolve! (I kind of wanted to use a metallurgical analogy)

Sure, I might end up being even more alone and isolated than I already am (if that’s even possible) but … I need change and I need it bad. I also need to find my people and I’m apparently not finding them around here. 

I was born in this area and I spent my entire life within a couple hours of there. I went to college somewhere in the middle and I’ve been working/living there ever since. Every Fall I find myself wanting to escape my life and run away … change something.

And to be quite honest I toyed with the idea of finding a job for a couple years in Chicago myself. Really taking a leap of confident risk, knowing that no matter how I might stumble I will not permanently injure myself in the fall or the landing … that I’ve got more than enough to succeed in whatever I pursue. I have some extended family there, and home is where the heart is (or where I thought it was at the time), or so sayeth Tad Williams in the Dragonbone Chair I think. It was a perfect storm of change and opportunity that fell apart and disintegrated as I held it in my hands.

Dreams are fluid and ephemeral like that I guess.

But as I stand here with my hands outstretched I find myself thinking that maybe I should consider a move like that anyway. I’m looking for work already, I’m changing industries hopefully and everything is open to change. Should I stay or should I go. Where would I go? Would I be able to form a life for myself somewhere completely foreign and new? Would I stay in the country?

Who knows.