" SpiritofSaltSpring:BC:Canada:GulfIslands:SaltSpring:Salt Spring:

November 12, 2009

Living with the challenge of a "Been There, Done That" Mentality

This time last year I was positively gushing about Salt Spring and the fact that I was living here on this paradise of an island.

I was going on about how I didn't want to lose sight of how I felt when I was driving and how the views from the car took my breath away. I was so busy writing and I hadn't even found my job yet but I was interacting with so many people and I was really renewed after a previous year of frustration and uncertainty.

I honestly (sorry to say) did not miss my friends from Vancouver when I moved here. Partly because most of them visited, some more than once, and partly because I was so busy and engaged.

It's a shock to miss them in this second year in a way I never missed them at all when I first got here. I just wasn't expecting that.

Now, a mere year and one month later, I'm thinking I'm feeling the way one feels when the initial infatuation of meeting someone new wears off. When suddenly all the things that you didn't want to lose sight of you've somehow managed to lose sight of.

I'm wondering if it's my usual November faced with four months of grey and rain "blahs" or is it that when you do something that you've wanted to do and you have a certain type of personality that can be summed up through "Been There, Done That, What's Next?" then you can't help but look around and think okay, now what? What's next?

On the one hand I can recognize this current discomfort as a positive feeling because once you've experienced what you hadn't experienced previously, then you can tell yourself that's the definition of progress and you are forced to begin to look around to think and feel out what your next step should be even if you have no idea what that might look like. I guess my discomfort is coming from the fact that I didn't think that would happen so fast.

Like a lot of things, the first step is really the easy part. It's beginning to feel that moving to Salt Spring was the easy part. Trying to find a way to live here and be happy and stimulated and not poverty stricken, that's a whole other challenge.

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