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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Where's the kick?

I’m growing restless… again.   I wish that it were a simple midlife crisis.  You know the cliché – big boobed coed’s.  Fast cars.  Hair transplants.   But it’s not.  This restlessness has happened many times before.   I think that it’s time to just admit that it’s an integral part of who I am. 

A good but-not-seen-often-enough friend put it in context for me a few weeks ago when Beth and I went into Amsterdam to meet her for drinks.  She’s from Macedonia and has experienced the same feeling.  Between us, we could finally articulate it.

We’ll call it The Expat Addiction, although for me it started very domestically.  The cross country adventure right out of college.  The move to Boise.  The move to Virginia/Pennsylvania/Maryland (10 in total).  All for the same restless reasons.   And with each step, just like with any self respecting addiction, the dose had to be more extreme to get the same feeling.  

It’s the kick that you get walking along a canal in a far-away city that you now find yourself living in.  Taking in the architecture.  Talking with the different people and learning their culture.  Discovering the hidden places and discovering more each day about yourself.  Pushing your limits.  Testing your boundaries.  It’s an experiential addiction that thrives on newness and uncertainty.  It's the possibility to reinvent yourself, again and again and again.

But as you become more shore footed, and the newness wears off, and the views become “ordinary” and life becomes easy and you slip back into being you, then for me at least, it loses its appeal.  It loses its kick. And for anyone who knows me, I need “kick” to survive.

So what the hell am I going to do about it?  I need some serious therapy to help me figure out how to revive the kick in my life without moving another 3000 miles.   And more importantly,how do we nominate Beth for canonization for putting up with this crap?  Even though it has nothing to do with big-boobed coeds, she’s still a saint in my book!