Something Different.....

I'm not sure what it is about this time of year, but I don't like it. While most people are getting excited about seeing family, taking trips, getting new stuff or just having a few days off from work, I start getting antsy around November 1. It's not that I don't want to see my family, but after living away from them for so long two days is the max before I need another 3 month break. And I love travelling! Driving doesn't bother me...I do it often enough that I'm ok with being in the car for hours (or days) at a time. New stuff is always great, as is a break from work, but yet I still find myself dreading the "jolly holidays" more than any other time of year.

I like my life. I like my job. My happy days outnumber the woeful "why me?" days most of the time...so what is it about this time of the year that makes me want to drive until I run out of gas just to spend a few weeks at whatever place I end up at? It's always this time of year that I start thinking about moving. Out of Texas. Somewhere far away where I don't know anyone and no one knows me. Away from the familiar, into the unknown, just to see if I can do it. "Just for one year," I tell myself. "Then I'll be ready to come home." But I think I know that's not true, which is why I never go.

I was only going to go to college for 2 years. Then it was going to be back to Midland, back to work, back to "home." Now I can't see myself ever going back there. In fact, when I visit I find myself not even going into town unless I absolutely have to. I run into people who seem surprised by the fact that I've changed in the last 3 1/2 years. I think it's odd until I realize that they haven't. They want me to come back and fill the hole I left, but I don't even recognize, or want to be, the person that they remember. Even my family doesn't seem to grasp the idea that I don't fill the same spot that I used to.

I look around today, and those people don't really seem to fit IN my life; they just happen to be around while I'm living. Don't get me wrong, I love the people that I hang out with, and I enjoy being around the people that I work with, but that's all there is to it. We hang out, we work, we go home. I'd miss them if I left, and I hope they'd miss me, but it wouldn't require any huge adjustments on any of our parts to get over it.

I'm stuck. I need something different. I need a change. And I have no idea what that looks like, where to find one and how to go about making it happen. It would have to walk up and slap me in the face before I could look at it and say "That might work." Even then, would I take the chance? Every year this comes around, I get over it, and I settle back into my rut in preparation for another year. And what do you know, the next November those same feelings start creeping back in.