I’m a big one for change. When I sense change approaching, the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and the souls of my feet tingle. Why this is, I don’t really know. Perhaps it’s some inherited genetic disposition towards it, I’ve always suspected something of the travelling type in mum’s side of the family and it would nice to thing it was the call of the open road and the next new horizon that kept me moving. But in truth, it’s likely to be something more personally psychological than that: fear of settling down, fear of establishing roots in case they are ripped carelessly from the ground. When I was 14, we moved from the town I had been born in (beautiful spa town of Malvern, stunning landscape, friends I had grown up with from primary school and went south to a housing estate near Newbury in Berkshire (house up house and no where to roam, flat horizon, rougher kids who didn’t know me and who I didn’t want to know). Since that move nothing was ever quite the same again, it’s been as if the momentum cause by the initial jolt out of Malvern has kept me flying through life ever since – from Newbury to the South Coast, up to Bolton, across to Switzerland, back to Manchester, up to Todmorden and then…
I’ve been in this flat for 2 and a half years and in the same job for more than 3 years now: the most settled I have ever been in all my life. And now I’m about to change it all again.
I’ve been making plans at work to jack in the 9 to 5 routine and go freelance: more flexibility in my life, more opportunity to explore ways of working that suit me, a lot less security. And it’s entered my head that, once I’ve done this, it will be time to leave the sanctity of my writer’s garret and return to the big city to live, for fear that otherwise I may become a hermit, living and working at home with nothing to look at but the ever changing colours of the moor land heather from my window and no one to talk to but Jo, the owner of the café next door, whose locally famously line “oh I’ve been sweating cobs in that kitchen” is never a good starting point for a conversation.
This all started a few months ago, when there was a real chance that I would be made redundant in my current job. This news, delivered to me by a colleague who is one of those people who knows everything that’s going on behind the scenes, didn’t scare me one bit. It sent a rush of energy through me, I was ecstatic and wanted it to happen immediately. If the momentum for change had slowed in the last few years, this news gave it a good boot and I was off again, thinking about a new future, a different way of things being.
But sometimes I stop and I wonder. Yeah sometimes work’s hectic, sometimes maddening, but generally it’s an “ok job”. And I love this flat and this sanctuary from the chaotic outside world I’ve built here, even if the windows do ice up inside during the winter and the locals are barmy. And I ask myself, am I just changing things for the sake of it, or I am moving on in life, bravely accepting that change must come in order for their to be growth? When, in short, should I be happy with what I’ve got, and when is it time to mix things up a bit (or a lot)? Answers on a postcard please.
I suppose it’s intuitive. Or it’s about reasons rather than acts. Some people spend their lives “tweaking” – jumping from lover to lover in order to find “the one”, scaling the career ladder, playing the property market game, improving their TV, their looks, their car. It’s as if they are seeking some kind of Niavara of Western consumerist life – the perfect partner, job, house, car, TV, wardrobe. Bliss. And of course, they never reach this place, and go on tweaking forever until they’re all tweaked out and either die of a heart attack, have a breakdown or just give up and settle for whatever they ended up with and take up Buddhism in order to “find contentment” in their lives. For me, it’s never been about having it better, but rather, having it new, different, another challenge, another opportunity – even if that means starting from square one again – where ever that is.
I’m not saying this is the prescription for a happy life – as I said – this urge to tear it up and start again is probably born out of my neurosis rather than my intellect and good sense – but I guess it works for me. Or has done in the past.
And what’s the alternative? To stay here, to continue in my “ok job”, to find the odd scrap of time to write, to dream of other lives, to look at photos of the past, my youth, when I was free, to go on holiday once or twice a year, to get that new TV, have a mortgage, sort out my pension, save for retirement, learn to sit still. It’s tempting, it really is.
But instead I make plans for next year, write a proposal for work, start casting my eye over the accommodation ads in the Manchester Evening News. And I feel that fear and that excitement (they way those two intertwine) and the hairs tingle on the back of my neck and yes, there’s change afoot. Something’s about to happen.