Life :: Stuck

Last updated on 8 August 2016

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A few weeks ago at a home group we were talking about the things that we fear in life. After some thought, I realised I’m afraid of very few things, but there was one main thing that I kept coming back to: I’m afraid of being stuck. Not like day to day, like if I get stuck in a hole, or I climb a tree and can’t get down. Not that kind of stuck.

Two of the ladies I work with have been in their job for decades. One for about 40 years, the other about 30.   Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve been moving around since I was 18months old, or perhaps it’s my curiosity, or my wanderlust, but whatever it is I can’t wrap my head around this. How can one possibly stay in the same place – the same house, the same job, the same community – for so darn long? Don’t get me wrong, I’m so impressed that they have settled down and they know absolutely everything about their jobs, and they’ve watched the places around them grow and change, and they can watch the progress of things. That’s wonderful. It must be so rewarding seeing the work you did 10, 20 years ago still be implemented now, or be able to look back and think ‘wow, look how far we’ve come’. But 40 years? Really!?

I like the idea of ‘settling down’, but I hate the idea of staying so long in one place that it becomes so difficult to leave, or move, or change. I like the idea of getting married, and buying a house, making it my own, being a part of the community. I like that. Heck, I love that idea. But not for so long that I forget the feeling of being on the move, or that I forget what is out there, all those possibilities, all those new people to meet, all those things to see and do. All the world to travel.

The longest time I’ve stayed in the same place is 13 years, and yes, that’s currently more than half my life. But that was during high school and University, and that’s understandable. But now that I’m an ‘adult’ (a term I use loosely), I feel like now is not the time to stay still. I’ve been back in New Zealand just over a year now, and I’ve been in the same city, have had 2 houses and one job. While I love where I am currently,  I feel like it’s where I’m meant to be right now at this time, and  I’m really bad about thinking about the future and what I want to ‘be when I grow up’, I know that I don’t want to be here in this job forever, nor do I want to be in Auckland forever. Some people would probably say ‘you’ve had your OE (overseas experience), you’ve seen some great things, you’re set for life’, but do you know how much more there is to see?! The world is small, yes, but it is so big.

I don’t want to wake up one day and think ‘just another day in the same job, with the same people, at the same desk, in the same place…the same way it’s been for the past thousand years’.  I know that things change over time, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, and that’s inevitable and normal, and great. I hate change. Okay, that’s a lie. I hate little changes – plans changing last minute, someone using my mug at work when I had already dreamt about that wonderful cup of coffee, an addition or subtraction to something that I’d already thought over and got sorted in my head – but I can do big changes. I can move country, continent, heck, I can move hemisphere it turns out…twice. I can change jobs, I can move house, I can cope with all of that.

Maybe that’s why I feel like I can’t stay in the same place for too long, because it involves too many little changes and not enough big ones. Or perhaps it’s because I’ve travelled, and once you have the travel bug, you can’t get rid of it. Whatever it is, I hope I never pass up opportunities to move, I hope I never lose the possibility to go where I want to go, I hope I never get stuck.

original image from here.