Always on the Move.

I have been told by many – not just in my travels, but all my life – that I have an eternally restless spirit. I don’t think I truly understood what they meant until this moment, on this train, bound for Seville.

Watching the serene landscape passby, I feel so at peace with myself and my life. There may be answers I don’t know, and I am okay with that. I don’t have a new “5-year plan” yet, and I am okay with that too. I know where I will be for the next 10 days and that is enough for now. Situations I left in New York, will sort themselves out in time. And I will sort myself out in the next seven weeks and the weeks that follow.

Moving, going places, being in transit, these are all phases of life I am 159% comfortable with. I feel “at home” in temporary situations. I like knowing that a situation has an expiration date. I like not knowing the final outcome. I like figuring things out as I move about, creating mini-plans for a 2 or 3 day stop. I like living life in chapters vs. the never-ending story. I like nomadding my way through life. I am not good at being settled.

But in allowing myself this time to truly let my restless side “go out to play”, the one thing I told her was “you better be settled by the end of the year.” And for someone like me that is like saying “I am going to super-glue your feet to the ground”. Who signs up for that?

As a result, I find myself wanting to bend my own rules. I said “settled” but I didn’t say for how long… If I know where I want to go, and I am not exactly there by the end of the year, does that count? The list of mental games I play with myself can be so daunting.

I do feel that these feelings of needing to keep searching are truly a result of not having found my latitude in life yet. I love being from Georgia, but I don’t want to live there. I love New York, but it too leaves a lot to be desired .I love Paris but the French make it mostly unbearable. I have thought countlessly of moving to the beach in Jacksonville, but I am not ready to buy that ticket just yet either.

Maybe all of these places are very similar to all the men who have wondered into my life. There have been some close calls – some a little too close if you ask me – but ultimately not one of them did I want to write more than a chapter with. The never-ending story just wasn’t going to happen with them, and not in any place I found them either. I always need more.

As long as I need more I have to keep moving. From station to station, port to port, heart to heart, until I find what I am looking for… Life is too magnificent to settle for half-way, or almost.

I may always be moving. I may always have a PO box instead of a mailbox. I may always have a storage unit instead of a proper home. I may always have a right-hand diamond instead of a wedding band. But “settling” is not an option. Never was, and truly, never will be.