Move it or Lose it!

I had an epiphany when I was moving. Mind you, I am on something like my 36th (or more!) place to live- I stopped keeping track a while ago. We moved around a lot after my parents got divorced, and the habit stuck with me throughout college and beyond. There's always a certain amount of grumbling associated with moving- it's exhausting. In fact its one of the main life events on the How Stressed Are You? quizzes mental health professionals have developed. Anyway, there I was, up to my eyeballs in boxes and chaos and sleep deprivation when it hit me-


I love moving.


It's true! Now there's always been a sort of disapproval I've sensed from others about my propensity for starting anew, which often shows up in a change in living space. Why don't I settle down? Stay in one place, get a good job, get married? etc etc. I have never quite managed to do that. I have internalized this disapproval and turned it against myself feeling something like "Boo. Here I go again, changing, moving, no roots for me, boo. Hoo." And in this a-ha moment of understanding that I love the process of moving, that there is something that is intrinsiclly gratifying to me with blank walls and discovering a new neighborhood, I decided to stop fighting it.

I am a gypsy! And I like it that way. I wonder, why do we ever try to be something we are not, or feel bad about what we are? We all do it, and it really doesn't serve us well at all.

Now a funny thing happened once I stopped feeling other's feelings about me (real or imagined, I admit, another most unuseful thing to do) and gave myself permission to just be who I am, a whole new dialogue started with myself. I thought: I might never own a house. Who cares? I might have apartments all over the world, or maybe live in Italy again. I may move another 35 times. Who knows? I am just going to go with it.

With a month or so, I started to feel like I wanted a house to settle into for me and my girl. Isn't that ironic? It's that principle I've talked about before: the minute you stop blocking the energy by worrying or focusing on lack or even caring, things start to flow in a natural pattern with effortless ease. I am really excited to see how things develop! I also realized that having a home isn't black or white. One could have a home and travel the world at the same time, moving around, here and there, for quite a while. People do it all the time. Just because that wasn't modeled for me, or encouraged, or even held as a possibility by the adults in my life, doesn't mean I can't have the life of my dreams.

And hire movers.