Suddenly it’s gotten to be August. Part of me wonders what happened to the first seven months of the year. I’ve lived in my new place for almost three months, and though the boxes are significantly fewer than they were, they still take up far too much space in my house. Over the next month I hope to gradually move more of them into storage once I’ve moved my daughter back up to school. The dilemma of the boxes is in part a function of my inability to allow myself to feel settled.
Several weeks ago I committed to staying (or wanting to stay) in California for at least the next 9 to 12 months to allow my daughter to finish college and my son to get a little further down the road with his vocational goals. But a big part of me realizes that I need to find a way to secure income (commonly thought of as getting a job), which could easily take me outside of the state. The current economic conditions both in my personal life and in the country means that I am looking for work both within and outside of California. So it’s hard to want to unpack my books and other things that are still loaded into boxes because should a job offer come from outside the state I can’t really afford to turn it down…can I? And so all that unpacking would be in vain. And yet if I don’t unpack, how am I ever supposed to feel settled?
This morning out at breakfast my friend Mary reminded me about the progress I’d made in sorting through and making sense of the various slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that have befallen me over the months. She is one of a handful of people in my life at the moment who has seen me regularly enough to be able to gauge how I’ve been doing. It’s good to have those people in one’s life who are able to hold up mirrors and help you to see things that you would likely otherwise miss. What I might see as halting, stumbling, painfully slow baby steps someone like Mary might see as laudable forward movement. (Because Mary is generally an optimist she has no doubt seen it as laudable and dubbed it so.) On the matter of my feeling unsettled and my hesitance to unpack only to potentially have to repack, Mary offered this, “If you want to guarantee getting a job offer from out of state, unpack and settle in!” I thanked her for her always helpful perspective.
In my ongoing quest to try to live in the moment rather than spend time regretting the past or sweating the future, I continue to seek and apply for work in a handful of designated locations around the country as well as here in the Bay area. On the one hand I am telling the Universe that I want to stay here, but also want to be open and willing to look elsewhere. My hope is that that planets will align in such a way that I can find the meaningful work I’m looking for right here in the greater Bay area. Either way, I’ll keep looking and applying and making those small steps forward. This afternoon, as has been my wont these past several days, I took a walk in Cesar Chavez park in Berkeley. On a day like today with perfect weather, walking with my dog by the San Francisco Bay I think, “Yep, I could definitely stay here.” I am grateful to be surrounded by beauty, and while such beauty exists elsewhere, this is the place, the area I am choosing to settle in. Gods willing.
Mount Tamalpais from Chavez Park
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