Tomorrow morning, I will once again start driving west across the country, my car bursting with belongings, my iPhone packed with podcasts, my mind racing with anticipation.
This time, however, instead of a blank canvas with only a few elements (Erik, Tahoe), there is a plan in place, a new stage of life to begin.
I have a new city, LA. The city hasn't stopped calling to me since October and I'm finally answering, driving to my new home in Los Feliz. In addition to appreciating the wild place LA is, I will also be using it as a jumping off point for the next adventures on my list. Some will be bigger (Burning Man, Comic Con, New Zealand) and some smaller (surfing, personal training, a return to theatre), but they will all be echoes of these past seven months. I will listen to what calls to me, knowing that my definition of happiness is following that call and smothering regret wherever possible.
I have a new roommate, Bing! Despite planning to live in a studio, I was randomly messaged by Sarah Sexton of GU Theatre about a friend she had in LA looking for a roommate. I Facebooked the guy and found that he knew Adam, Clarke, and Jason, three LA contacts from high school. When I asked them for their thoughts on Bing, they glowed about him, with Adam even saying "Bing may actually be a perfect roommate for you and you for him. This is truly magical." After that rosy review, I went ahead and reached out to Bing. He sent along details and pictures, revealing a beautiful two-story set-up that would be half the cost of the studio I'd applied to. Suddenly, I faced the possibility of paying down my sabbatical debts quickly and having a built-in travel budget. After hammering out some details, Bing told me I could have the spot. I now have a place to stay, greater financial flexibility, and a roommate who already knows three of my LA friends.
I have a new job...which is my old job in a new place. I'm returning to Towers Watson (now Willis Towers Watson, actually) in their LA office. As I mentioned in my last post, the sabbatical brought clarity around my professional motivations. I am looking forward at a year of weddings, friends' new children, and big adventures, and I don't want to miss one moment of it because I'm strapped financially. I'm also excited about the job because I have learned a mountain about myself and I feel as though I'll walk through those semi-familiar doors with a new approach, one that fits me. When I left the Atlanta office last July, I wrote an e-mail telling the Atlanta team (and apologizing to the DC one) that I felt I had bloomed in Atlanta. I still think that, but there may be even more Ian to bring to work and I'm going to give it a shot.
I have a new outlook. The last seven months have been magnificent, with 2015 making a strong case for one of my best years ever (though 2016 is already opening strong). Everything defied my expectations: support came from surprising places, goals morphed before my eyes, and lessons rewrote the way I see the world. If I had to isolate a few things I've taken away from this breathtaking time, I would focus on the following three.
First, as mentioned above, I have to try something to stop thinking about it. Whether it was living in Atlanta, taking time off to write, or even skydiving, I can feel the things I want to do in life under my skin and the longer I let them linger, the darker that desire can get. I have told many people that LA is the next itch I have to scratch and though I hope to think up some better imagery, I'm planning to spend 2016 playing Whack-a-Mole with goals, big and small.
Two, I now see myself as a nexus of the amazing people in my life. Since 2014, I have become viscerally aware of the support I have behind me, but only in the past few months have I realized that I am the only person who gets the support of my specific family, my specific high school friends, my specific college friends, and my specific smattering of amazing people I've met since graduation. I share each separate group, but the overall cocktail of social support is unique to me. In one sense, this awareness humbles me, overwhelms me with gratitude that so many incredible people fill my life. In another, I have to remind myself that this particular arrangement of support forms a silhouette around me, that I can take some degree of pride and validation from the motley company I keep. In short, when I think of my friends and family, I think I must be doing something right.
Third and perhaps most simply, the joy of the last seven months has been worth everything that's ever happened to date. Whether leaping out over the glassy surface of Tahoe or laughing with friends on Halloween night, I have blissed out hard over and over again. Furthermore, I wouldn't have enjoyed those moments if things had gone "to plan." It's unimaginable to me now that my life could ever have gone in such a way that I didn't live with Erik for three months, but living with him was the product of some relentless reversals. As a result, I find it much simpler to accept the whiplash of life. No matter how painful, bleak, or dark moments in my past have gotten, I needed them all to get to my recent heights. I cannot fully convey the calm that comes with validating one's entire timeline in a stroke, merely because I found myself smiling ear-to-ear about the moment at hand. It has lifted so many weights.
I am breathlessly excited for the year ahead. The first month of the year has been epic in its own way and I haven't even left familiar surroundings yet. As for this blog, who knows? I recently read that the best form of creativity for folks like me is autobiographical and I just spent the holidays fielding questions about the drop-off in entries after I reached Tahoe, so people are reading. Then again, I often see this exercise as self-indulgent, the sort of thing I might not want to read myself if I weren't the one writing it (see also: My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard). This has also been the first entry I've written while writing morning pages (from The Artist's Way) and that is a LOT of writing even when I don't have work. I think I just have to treat it like everything else. If I feel the need, I'll do it, and I'll be sure to spam Facebook and the like to get it in front of all of you.
So begins my Year of Frontier.
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