living alone and wanting to make a change

[rosencrantz]

A quote within a quote - very neat!     Did you know you can edit your own posts?  If you look in the top right hand corner of your post, you'll see a little edit box.  Then you can play around with the tools by using 'preview' until you're ready to 'submit'.    It's not required tho!  Posting is more important than perfection!!  On the other hand, think about it this way, you are in charge, you can control your own destiny!!!!

I think you've got two options (other than staying in the same place geographically, emotionally, mentally).

Commit or explore.  

Commit to 'there' and actively make a better, settled, fulfilled life with people (and cats!) and a home in a place that doesn't have the negative of a highway outside.  Or commit to the USA and actively make a better, settled, fulfilled life with people (and cats!) and a home in a place that doesn't have the negative of a highway outside!!!  Just 'choose' - cos when you throw everything up in the air, it's all going to come down in the same place wherever you end up!!!

OR commit to exploring the world for a year, or two years.  What have you got to lose??  My first thought was 'experiment a bit' - have a year in Europe or spend a year touring the States - until you find a place that 'feels' like home.  Get one of those big vans you can sleep in and go on the road.  Visit old friends. At 40, no ties, presumably some savings.  Search out the real life, risk something, get the cats a foster home - and find yourself.

R
Who said that?  Portia - help - I'm channelling again!!!!!  

[write]

turning 40 is a milestone for many people, symbolic.
One of my friends told me she felt it was the end of a lot of things for a while...before it seemed a beginning!
I think you're right to connect it to your current inertia.

[Jasmine]

Dawning,

I'm only 3 years from that age milestone myself, and I feel it already, believe me.  I think, as others have said, that this has some bearing on things culminating emotionally for you.

I relate well to where you are at within, in a lot of ways.

I wrote the 3 points not to focus on "the downward" but because if we have no idea why we do what we do, we will remain stuck far longer.
When we know why we are acting a certain way, we can think of very specific things to do about it, which might help with big decisions we need to make.  

I like what R said:   "Which is worse - facing change or facing stasis?????"

There is a quote that I saved years back, that relates well to that thought:

" And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
--Anais Nin


   

[/i]

[Dawning]

Jasmine wrote:

I wrote the 3 points not to focus on "the downward" but because if we have no idea why we do what we do, we will remain stuck far longer.
When we know why we are acting a certain way, we can think of very specific things to do about it, which might help with big decisions we need to make.

I couldn't agree more.  But I guess I am sometimes my own worst enemy when it comes to this.  Self-doubt  and passivity which has been with me far too long and I am ready to put an end to it.  You are definitely right about thinking pro-actively about the stuff.   Just had a conversation this afternoon and we were talking about the electro-shocks that scientists give rats in a cage.  At first, they run away from the shocks but if they have no where to go, they just take it and don't run away any more.  Ahh, the cage of life.  I think I was in it this time last week.  Now, I remember another line to a funny song from way back when:

"Questioner: Swami, what's the key to the universe?

Swami:  Well, I've got some good news and I've got some bad news.  The bad news is that there is no key.  The good news it that it has remained unlocked."

 

I'm not in a cage.  But living alone and overthinking with no feedback or support can get me thinking that way.  Mother's recent tactics haven't helped either.  

Commit or explore

R, I really like that.  


~Dawning