You can read the previous Monday Confessional here.
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Confession: I've been seriously considering a move to the west coast.
Just before 2015 started, I sat down in front of my journal and began to write down all of my hopes and dreams and goals for the year. Some of these goals involve places I want to go (Europe), what I want to do with my money (save more/give more), activities I need to do more (snowboard/rock climb), and how to love people better (don't be an idiot).
Among those items on the list is a question: Is it time for me to go somewhere else?
It's a scary question. It's one that kept popping up for me, and I finally worked up the nerve to write it down.
On a side note, I've found that writing something down, even if it's for my eyes only, makes it so much more real. Terrifyingly real. If I can keep it as a mere thought, it's more like an imaginary creature, say a unicorn, flying around in the land of pretend inside my head. No consequences, no implications--just rainbows and sparkles, and I can make it all disappear with a snap of my fingers. The second I write it down, though, it's like poof! and I'm staring at a real, live unicorn in my room and I'm thinking, "What the heck do I do with this thing?" I don't know the first thing about unicorn care. What do they eat? Do they bite? This unicorn doesn't look as jolly and fun-loving as he did in my head.
And we're back. Ever since I wrote that question down, I've wrestled with it. I've locked arms with it, and I've rolled around in the dirt with it almost every day.
I normally wouldn't share something like this in this space--something that has so many implications for so many people in my life--but the conclusion I've come to is worth putting it out there.
I'm not moving.
Not now, anyway. I'm open to it, like I'm open to a lot of things in my life. As a rule, I'm trying to stop myself from planning and mapping all of it out.
I realized I'm not moving because I discovered what my motivation was. During this process, I shared my bothersome question with two people total. And each person responded with a question of their own: "Why?"
Great. Frickin. Question.
The answer to that question sputtered out of me one night as I tried, and failed, to bring up legitimate reasons. Out of the incoherent fog of my excuses (even the good ones--the weather, the mountains, the beaches, the lifestyle) arose the true, driving force behind this whole ordeal: I was running away from something.
I wanted to escape.
Here's what I know about running--it's much better to run to something than to run from something.
If I ever move, I want to have something on the horizon, something I've fixed my eyes on, something I really desire, and I want to run toward it with everything I have.
I don't want to leave my painting unpainted, leave my song without a resolving chord, leave behind everything and everyone important to me, because I decided to run away from something.
I don't want to run to escape. I want to run right through my challenges. I want to run to love, to hope, to dream, to build.
I can resolve that question in my journal now.
Is it time for me to go elsewhere? No. Not yet. Not while there's still so much to run to here, where I am.