Some people have their profound realizations and best ideas when they're taking their morning showers. Me? My life-changing epiphanies usually happen when I'm driving to work. Now, these epiphanies don't happen often (I'm usually too busy singing along to the Dropkick Murphys or Taylor Swift to have too many conscious thoughts) but when they do happen, they tend to be doozies.
The last time it happened was January 8, 2020. I was driving to work, and feeling...restless, I guess? Perhaps a little trapped, a little bored. While I love the safety and steadiness of a predictable life with minimal risk, it can get occasionally...oppressive. By then, I had been living in Indiana for four years. I had a job that I loved, but I was perhaps starting to feel as though I wasn't challenged enough, and that Bloomington had simply gotten too small. I found myself wondering, What if I am still doing this in five years? Driving down this same road, heading to the same job? And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I wouldn't want that. I was happy enough at the present time, but I wouldn't be forever. I knew it completely, and I knew it immediately, and the next question came without bidding, Where DO I want to be 5 years from now? And the answer came just as quickly, and with just as much certainty: "I want to be living in Indy." I had always wanted that, or at least since 2005, and really, Bloomington was only ever supposed to be a temporary soft landing until I got my bearings. But I had fallen in love--with my job, my organization, my colleagues. And so I had been hooked but good.
Later that day at work, a colleague mentioned that the Indy Public Library was hiring in a position that sounded perfect for me. I was tempted; god, I was tempted. I thought about it, and talked it over with my mentor, and he watched in quiet amusement as, before his eyes, I undertook a fierce but brief mental struggle and ultimately decided not to apply. 5 years from now is not NOW, after all. But still...I made sure to document it in my memory journal that night.
And then the pandemic happened. Lockdown, quarantine, social distancing and isolation and the collective ongoing trauma that simultaneously blasted us apart yet in some ways, drew us together. But mostly blasted us apart. Two years later, and most of us still seem to be stumbling about, trying to make sense of things and rebuild even as the world persists in re-falling apart around us anew every morning. Two years later...
Two years since that day that I promised myself I'd live in Indy in five years...I find myself living in Indy. So, a bit ahead of schedule, I guess? The pandemic changed so much in my life; during the first year of it, pretty much all but two of my closest friends moved away from Bloomington. The nature of my work changed; the organization changed profoundly, as well. And I think I changed, too. I'm more tired and jaded and hopefully more compassionate than I was two years ago. I've realized that I'm less of an introvert than I thought (or, at least, not to the point where I can withstand two months of little human interaction). More than ever, I don't like my time being wasted (unless I am wasting it, on my terms) and I have gotten really really good at not hanging about when I'm not wanted. I've changed jobs, I've changed address, and that's quite enough upheaval for me for at least another five years, thank you very much.
Finally, I am in the city I have been dreaming about for seventeen years, living close to some very old, dear friends. I live in a old townhouse that's showing its age (who isn't, these days?) and perhaps because really, this dream is a pretty modest one, I have not yet found myself disappointed in it. (Incidentally, I've found that this is how I have found a lot of contentment in my life: expectation management.) So, here I am, in Indianapolis, finally. And I find that I'm pretty frickin grateful it didn't take me 5 years to get here.
(My commute is three times as long as it used to be. But hey, bright side--that's three times as much time on my drive to work to have some really great revelations and epiphanies!)
