I find change hard. Especially when I like how things are now. I don’t know how the next second, minute, hour, day, week will unfold. Now is nice. Let’s stay here. Forever.
The older I get, the more I realize that, while I would love to be the kind of person who spontaneously … does something. I am not. I can’t even put together a sentence as an example. I have nothing to draw from.
When my husband and I were dating, we were driving past a wooded area, and he asked if I wanted to hike.
Sure.
I like hiking.
He started pulling the car over.
Wait, now?!
“Yeah. Why not?”
Because we don’t have hiking clothes or the proper shoes.
He was wearing a white button-down shirt, after all! It could get destroyed at worst, dirty at best.
This was a moment where I learned that I am not spontaneous. I like a plan and the proper equipment when I embark on an adventure.
Years earlier, when I moved from college in Oklahoma to work as a performer at a theme park in Georgia, I remember sitting alone in my car in a grocery store parking lot. Crying.
So much was new. It was overwhelming.
College was done. I lived in a new state. I was starting a new job. New people. New roommates. (Heck! Roommates! I had lived by myself in college!)
Within weeks, I knew my way around the city and the theme park, felt settled, and was fine. But, man, I had some deep cries along the way.
From the time I left college to move to Georgia until I got married, a span of only two years, I moved seven times among three states.
As I noted, when I first moved to Georgia, I cried. I had been in the same apartment for three years of college prior to the move. I had a rhythm and routine to my life.
The move totally interrupted my known routine which had provided me with a sense of safety. I was completely unaware of this dynamic at the time.
I stayed in Georgia for fifteen months and then moved to New York. I lived in three different apartments during my one-year stay in New York and then moved back to Georgia to get married. Less than a year in Georgia, and it was back to New York.
As the moves went by, the tears dried up. I was getting used to it. I knew some things to expect. The unknowns became part of what was normal.
By the time I landed in New York the second time, husband in tow, “change” was my new normal. I got so used to moving that after a year of living in our first New York apartment, I felt unsettled and like I needed to go somewhere. Move!
This surprised me. I had identified my tears when I moved to Georgia the first time to be caused by moving to a new place. It was, in part. But it was also because I was used to living in one place for a long time.
Change came in the form of moving.
By the time I was settled in New York, moving had become the norm, so change came in the form of staying in one place.
I constantly find these little shifts in my rhythms and expectations. I find them because my emotions expose them!
I like rhythms.
I like knowing what to expect.
I like not having to reorient myself.
And yet, I chose to be an actor. The most unstable, disorienting, change-filled career!
Maybe I crave stability in my personal life because my career is full of such unknowns.
I might need the help of a professional to unpack that one!