It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Well, I’ve been off on one of those adventures adults get to go on. You know the ones? Where you start a new job, so for a while you don’t have time for the other things. And you move countries (again) and have to find new friends, new spots to feel comfortable, new groups to join and new hobbies you don’t really have time for, yet. And you think about getting a cat. Or a car. Or buying a house. (More on that later).
It’s been an adventure, as I said. It’s an interesting life, to look back and realize… we left Canada in 2019. And then to realize that was 4 years ago. And then to realize so much about you has changed since then. It’s like a waking up with a different brain, except it was changing incrementally and now that you look back, you barely recognize the You before. Not that it was a worse you, or that you’re completely transformed (come on, we’re not butterflies). It’s that you’re braver than you used to be. You see some things in a new light. Not a better light. Just a different one. And you feel content, like you did before, but it’s still not the same, is it? Your idea of contentment expands to mean something it didn’t used to.
So now you’re at that fork in the road, I suppose. Where you ought to decide what the rest of your future will look like. Except there isn’t just one fork. It’s a forest of branches all sticking out in their own way. And it’s not really about choosing at that point, is it? I suppose you ought to start climbing trees and leaping paths and remembering it’s the one life you’ve got to live. So I’ll be climbing, sometimes. And running, too. Perhaps even fit in a swim.
Because in some ways, it’s a disappointment to other people–to know so surely what brings contentment to them, and to see it different for someone else. But as much as we’re all the same, it’s not really in the pursuit of happiness that we find what we’re looking for. It’s in the day-to-day things. In the feeling of returning fingertips to keyboard, with a blank screen in front of you.
So for now, we’re settled. We’re content. We’re fulfilled. And we’re not going anywhere. We’ve found this is our next stage and though it’s not what everyone hoped, it’s where we are. And it’s where we want to be. Joy, for us, is the new (old) car, the new (good) friends, and some day, the new cat and the new house. But we’ll just have to wait and see where life takes us next. Who knows.
Just know that wherever we are in the world, it might be worth a visit 🙂