Off for a jaunt....and some thought.

It's no secret I've been restless lately. I've been wrestling (as usual) with the fact that in just over a month, I'll have been in Chicago for four years. That's the longest I've ever lived in one place in my life, and while on the one hand, I love it...there's the other hand that flips me the bird for sitting still too long.

Sometimes - as anyone who's been a reader of this whine-fest for very long can attest - I resign myself to the fact that always feeling like something's missing is the curse (and gift) of being a creative type. Sometimes I just chalk it up to the muses and it's no big deal. And other times I feel consumed and driven by a need to cram as much experience as I possibly can into my life. I crave adventure, I crave challenges, I crave new horizons and throughout my life, I have fed that craving.

Since moving to Chicago, I have done a lot of thinking about the possibility that this seeking nature is a mask for a fear of intimacy. If I move around, if I leave, if my environment and the people in it aren't consistent, then I never have to open up, I never have to share or be vulnerable. I've realized that maintaining relationships is soooo much work, and soooo difficult, and maybe part of me likes the fact that most of my close relationships have been short-lived. I have worried that my recurring restlessness was really just my subconscious trying to protect my heart from scary things like letting people really get to know me.

On the other hand, since acknowledging so many of my emotional walls and barriers and really coming to grips with the fact that i can't have a truly rewarding relationship without opening up and being vulnerable....I have. I have, on several occassions and in several different circumstances, opened up, risked rejection, had the balls to just be honest about my needs and wants and flaws....and survived. Some of those relationships ended, others continue now. I dunno if I necessarily buy that my restlessness was a mask for some other issue. I have to think about the possibility that maybe I am just a restless kinda girl.

And what does that mean?

Well, I've recently been offered a chance to make a move. A big, life-changing move. A cross-country, go back to school, try something new, chance-of-a-lifetime kinda move. The kinda move that normally I wouldn't even think twice about making, and that part of me is already planning in my head. But then there's the other part of me that wants to think this through and weigh the options and really consider my motivations for doing this in the first place.

I'm not sure how this will go, but stay tuned. It's about to get crazy up in here.