It has been about eight years since I wrote here last. In that time, I have moved across the world two times, gotten married, and changed careers. I feel more stable, but it is less a "ahh the boat isn't rocking as much, phew" and more like gravity is heavier and I am being held here in place by that downwards force.
Does that sound as sad to you as it sounds to me? It isn't as if this stability is all bad--like I mentioned, there is some relaxation that has come with all the rocking about--but with getting older a feeling of "this is my life now.." has overcome me.
I used to assume that I could do anything--and I moved, switched jobs, refused to get too serious romantically--all assuming as much. It was wild. Now, however, I am realizing that each move cost me a year or two of savings and an unknowable loss in friendship and connections. In other words, if I ever really want to have a community and, you know, maybe RETIRE, I would was going to have to start settling down. Maybe, I mean, just moving a few thousand miles less each five years, for example.
Now I am back in the USA. I am working in a new field, as I mentioned, and my husband is here too. Having a career and a husband, and a husband who is inherently more... still? settled? less anxious? than I--it all means that I am suddenly trying to make plans for twenty years from now.
Twenty years! For most of my life, I was thinking... max... 8 months ahead--to the next big holiday and the next big vacation. And I wasn't really worried about what would happen after that; I felt like I would figure it out or, if I couldn't, that would be interesting too--but mostly that it would probably be okay. Now, I look back at that and feel such envy for that time-psychosis, for that temporally blind confidence, for being more in the moment and just doing things that were interesting then.
Now I worry about the past, the present, and the future. I regret having partied so hard and not having invested more of my energy in my daytime friends and my hobbies. I worry about not having enough savings, getting sick, being unable to restrain myself and making out with some sexy stranger whose attention makes me feel special again, because being married long enough means that you no longer feel attractive and, being vain, you still need that adrenal burst that comes from someone wanting you.
In short, there are so many things that can go wrong now that I am more stable. I could screw up this marriage. I could screw up my career. I could screw up my health. Before, alone and throwing myself across Tokyo and New York, I only worried about my safety and how to get home. And STD's.
I ask myself now if I could rebuild my sense of Now and Excitement by doing more now and thinking less about the future--or would that just be putting me At Risk. This is the question I am asking myself now.
Less red wine, more confusion.
Comments