12/17/23: Back At It

Been in a weird sort of headspace the last week or so! I don't like it and I don't know how to make it stop!!

To summarize without getting too detailed, I feel like I'm waiting for a sign to run. The track-and-field coach's gun hasn't fired off yet, and I'm getting cramped as hell standing in running position like this for as long as I have been. Nothing feels interesting or fun, I'm going through the motions and able to feel the ups and downs of my day-to-day as usual, but it's starting to feel like this is as good as it gets. I'm longing for more, with no way of getting it. I seek change. I'm at the bottom of a pit staring up at the sky from the safety and comfort of the hole I've dug to live in, and it sucks down here. I want to go where the people are!!

I wish I had a magic wand so I could change everything about my life all at once. Well, not everything. I have a really really cushy job, a cool apartment, a great cat, and overall a very comfortable life. But for the last 26 years of my life I've hated the way I look from top to bottom, with few interludes of feeling pretty alright. I want a fresh start. I want to leave Indianapolis and go somewhere I've never been before, where no one knows me, where I can find a new version of myself without the consequences of someone asking why I changed so much.

This is, unfortunately, quite possible. I had a scheme with my best friend from high school to run off to the East Coast, and now that one of my other best friends is making the trek from LA to Boston, I feel like I have all the more reason to up and leave. There's job openings in the city that I was thinking about. I could get an apartment, I could move, I have the money to live for a month or so in between places, in between jobs, if I had to.

All the same, I don't think I can leave. Not like this. My job is losing two extremely experienced perfusionists, one who's moving to be with their spouse, one who's retiring. We have two new hires that will start in June. My favorite coworker has plans to leave but with no date in sight. These people do rely on me to stay for a while, and I don't know if three years is enough. I know I'm not being fair to myself, though, because I never got upset with my coworkers when they left for their past reasons. Moving in with a partner, moving to have a job closer to home, moving for more money, retirement, whatever, everyone's got their reasons. I hope that my current team would understand that, for me, if it came down to it. But I'm afraid.

More than anything... I feel like I'm not that kind of person who could just jump head first into an entirely new life in the first place. What does it take to become a person like that, though? Impulsive and free, instead of closeted and calculating. Could I change that much, just by leaving? I'm afraid to find out. Right now, in my hole, I'm charting out a vague timeline of events if I keep feeling this way. I'm headed to a big perfusion conference come March, and I'm sure to meet a lot of people, many with jobs out in the northeast. If I can talk to them, if it sounds like it'd be a good fit, I could ask to move over the summer. When my apartment asks to renew my lease come April, I'll ask for month-to-month so I have enough time to pack things up and get everything ready. I'll take a cross country road trip with Dean, and he'll be miserable the entire time it takes to get to Maine or wherever. It's not well worked out, but, if I dedicate more time to thinking about it I'll lose my nerve, cursing myself to live and die in Indiana.

I'm gonna go take a walk, and enjoy my neighborhood while it's still mine, and keep my ears open for whenever the starting blank goes off.

Godspeed.