It happens every spring, almost like clockwork.
I get antsy. Very antsy.
And I find myself, like many of us, completely sucked into the whole spring cleaning thing. I want to throw open my windows, clear out my house and make things new. I want to do things like purge what is out of size or out of date from my closet and pantry and establish healthier habits like getting better (much better!) at recycling and eating less sugar. I want to finish every project I may have started and then set aside (damn you, stack of magazines that I have been meaning to cut up and craft into a spectacular, life-changing vision board!) I want to get going on everything in my life that may have somehow fallen through the cracks over the past year. I want to get caught up. I want to get things done.
But sometimes "cleaning house" also manifests itself in another way. In the sense of considering working elsewhere, possibly changing zip codes and, in the process, maybe changing my life a little. These thoughts take up residence in my head, too, as I am attempting to clear and clean everything else out.
Once spring has sprung, I feel like I am sprung, too, and moving in a hundred directions at once. All in an attempt to create order and clean out my life in anyway possible. I want to do everything and do it all at once, suddenly energized by the new more sunshine-y and longer days I'm experiencing. Does this sound at all familiar to you? Is this just another form of spring fever?
I'd like to say it's just spring. And spring cleaning. And a small obsession with progress and improvement. But it's not. There is more to it. Put simply, there is a restlessness about me each year at this time. I'm not sure why it happens but that is exactly how it feels...like a restlessness that gets right into my gut, sets up shop and will not go away.
People don't like to be restless. Most like a calm predictability and knowing what comes next and feeling settled. Let me say that differently: I like a calm predictability. I like to know what comes next and feeling settled. And trust me, a restlessness can endanger all of that and quick. A restlessness cuts right through whatever facade you have up, pulls at your elbow and asks, "this is nice but what if...there is something else?" For me, it makes me wonder, "if I approached things differently could there maybe another better me/better life trapped inside the life and skin I am currently in?" It makes me question how close I am to what I really want.
Sure, being restless sounds like a drag. And it can be. There are days when I think, Who am I? And am I
biting off more than I can chew by simply wanting more from my life? I am very blessed. Why try for more? I question if by looking at my life so closely I am not just inviting a bit of grief into it at the same time.
But when I looked up restlessness in the dictionary, I became hopeful. The word "mobility" was listed right next to it as a related word. Mobility, or "the quality of moving freely". And suddenly this restlessness changes into something else. It transforms from being a curious wonder in my gut to a calming whisper. A whisper that says, "Hey...you wouldn't have this longing unless you were meant to pursue it. So keep going...keep trying...keep searching: you are almost there and you are getting closer." It reminds me that movement of any kind and doing so freely is still possible no matter how locked into place things can seem. And, even more, it is a quality. It is actually a very good thing.
So I might be young and a bit restless right now. But I might also be getting closer to where I am meant to be. And by just remaining open to this restlessness, this spirit of change, this whisper of possibility that sits in my belly, I might just get closer to where that is. In my head and in my heart.
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