One of the beauties of living an untethered life is the possibility to make a fresh start on a regular basis. Every few months (at the most) for the past few years, we have changed locations, jobs, or both. Though there are plenty of challenges associated with this mode of living, right now I’m feeling grateful for the opportunity to once again reinvent myself.
I’ve been living in Portland, Oregon for just over two weeks now. Mary is working a 13-week travel assignment at a local hospital and I am…not sure what I’m doing. For me, it feels like a chance to think about my work life, and decide if it is still working for me instead of me working for it. Other than travel for fun, we have stayed on the East Coast since we stopped living full-time anywhere in 2015, and that has meant that I was able to pick up enough work with Carolina Tailwinds and North Carolina Outward Bound to keep me busy. But now, that work is an expensive plane flight away, making the income not worth the expense. But more importantly than that, I have been feeling the urge to make some changes for a while now.
There have been times in my life where I have felt stuck in a rut. The deepest one I fell into was a period while I was still living in Tuscaloosa four years after finishing my four-year degree at The University of Alabama. I knew I needed change, but I did not know how to make it happen where I was. I needed a fresh start, and fortunately, I was able to find one at Outward Bound.
I feel like I am at a similar point in life. I know I want to alter my work life, yet I’ve found it difficult to make it happen while it has been so easy to keep doing what I’ve been doing. Sometimes, I need a radical shift to happen in order to spark change in my life, and right now, being in Portland feels like it could be such an event. So here I am, with an opportunity to try something else.
So what will I do with this fresh start? I don’t know, but I’m open to ideas…
Anyone?
