Monday, August 31, 2009

Getting Antsy

A few years ago I finally acknowledged what my friends had been chuckling over for years: I've got a touch of hyperactivity in me.

When I get busy, I get over busy, with several projects running at once. I talk fast, think at hyper speed, and always have my eye on the next set of things I want to do.

For most of my life, I never gave it a second thought. Heck, aside from realizing that I talked way too fast for most people (being constantly asked to slow down made that hard not to catch!), I always figured I did things the same way as everyone else.

Deep inside of me, though, I always wondered how people settled down and stayed in the same community for decades. When we moved to New Jersey, I think I really tried to buy into that, and at one point I might have almost had myself convinced that I could take comfort in living in the same house for 30, 40, or 50 years until it was time for either a nursing home or a grave.

It was an incredibly pleasant surprise to find that my husband had been as antsy as I was about living in NJ. It wasn't until we had been living in Israel for a couple of years that I learned he had been thinking about making a change for quite some time.

Well, we've been in Israel for 10 years, in the same apartment for five, and I'm getting antsy again.

We've had a realtor in to appraise our place, and the day after she was here, I turned to my husband and said that we have a chance to make another huge change in our lives, and what did he think?

A couple of years ago I suggested that we sell our apartment, and backpack around the world for a few years. He sweetly demurred, but smiled and said it was fine with him if I did some traveling. I jumped at the chance, and since then have been either on the way to somewhere new or busy planning my next trip.

But I'm starting to get an itch for more than just a month or two of travel a couple of times a year. I want the challenge of living in a new place, getting adjusted to a new culture, learning a new language, experimenting with new foods.

I've suggested six months in London or Paris, thinking that a central, metropolitan area might be fun. I've got visions of hopping a train or bus or cheap flight for weekends exploring Europe.

Just as I start feeling comfortable in that idea, I get another vision: of a quiet life on an exotic island deep in the South Pacific. A couple of years ago, we spent a fun afternoon fantasizing about changes we could make in our lives, and I had another pleasant surprise when my husband started talking about moving to far flung places.

In my realistic moments, I acknowledge that for now, we'll probably just move to a smaller apartment in the same town, and I'll continue to travel, with, hopes that my husband will join me on a trip or two.

But we have agreed to get rid of as much of what we've accumulated over the years as we can. He'll be happy with just simplifying our lives, but I'm thinking that the less we have to pack and unpack, the easier it will be for us to pick up and go...

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