Today is the first week, in over 8 years that the only responsibility I have (outside my home and husband) is to go to work from 8:30am – 5:00pm. There’s no class to teach or training to go to. No homework to complete. No clients to meet with. No website to update. No shirts to sell. There’s no multitasking. No conference call. Doing one thing, in one place for an extended period of time is new, and oddly uncomfortable.
My entire life I craved challenge of change and was fed, even fueled by the seduction of the unknown and unpredictable. In my 20’s I satiated this desire by moving every 1-2 years. Not just moving from apartment to apartment, within the confines of a city limit, but big, vast moves that required new jobs, new space and new friends. From Boston to Portland (almost) to Albany to New Orleans to El Paso to New Orleans to the burbs of Philadelphia to San Francisco to Philadelphia (almost) to Vermont and back to Boston. Each time I began to feel itchy, uncomfortable stagnation, I moved.
Once I hit 30 I started testing the settling down waters. Perhaps it was the ticking of some internal clock or maybe the Virgo in me was finally surfacing and demanding stability. I stayed in Boston for 4 years and while keeping the same job, transferred to the Jersey Shore. But geography doesn’t necessarily equate stability. I satiated my wanderlust with a different variety of unknown and unpredictable, education and entrepreneurship. I volunteered for my national sorority as an International Standards Board Member and Chapter Key Advisor. I went to yoga school, I went to nutrition school. I became a doula and even contemplated midwifery school. I became certified in Hoop-Dance Fusion, Mayan Abdominal Massage and became a Reiki Master and Life Coach. I birthed two thriving businesses and joined as partner in a third.
Each time I started something new, I let the previous fall from the spotlight a bit like the Velveteen Rabbit. My need for the exhilaration of the unknown has an unparalleled list of casualties; 30+ hula hoops in storage, no less than 15 yoga mats and a library filled with yogic philosophy, 4 half completed websites, 3 blogs and about $500 in inventory of semi-precious stones and unmade fertility malas. I even closed my thriving health coaching practice with a waiting list of doula clients for the excitement of something new. My latest casualty? A closet filled with organic tee shirts and the aftertaste of disappointment and regret. When I sit back and think of all I have accomplished and things I have tried, it’s dizzying. My curiosity and wanderlust is a bewitching mistress. It’s an energy within me that I haven’t figured out how to tame. And quite frankly, I don’t want to tame it, I just need to harness it.
It’s obviously time to pause and contemplate.
Joy up By Design 
Talk to me!