Moving to Chicago has been an absolutely life-changing experience for me. I've been introduced to a new city with different laws, seemingly endless vertical growth (rather than horizontal), an almost entirely different set of ideals, and a liveliness unlike anything I've experienced before. I've made new friends (while simultaneously losing contact with old ones, but that's life), tasted new foods, discovered different ways of thinking and completely surrounded myself with the unknown. This move has brought the bad as well as the good, however, and I've fought a major bout of homesickness, more than a few colds, a complex bus system (that I now feel I've all but conquered), people who say “pop” instead of “soda” and a general feeling of strange disorientation with the world around me. The point I'm trying to make here is that life, and mine in particular at this moment, is about changing things up, embracing the unusual and the strange and discovering new things about both yourself and this amazing world we live in, all to achieve inner growth and expand our points of view. My life at this current moment is about the journey, not the destination, which is why I know for a fact that I'm not done yet.
Since my move, I've had stagnant thoughts of life choices, mostly concerning my career and location. I've been in the mindset that I've chosen this for myself, here I am, there's nothing I can do about it now. The actual truth couldn't be any farther from my discouraging thoughts. The truth that I've been enlightened with is that my life is so far from settled, it's almost sickening. Well, maybe not sickening, but I've got quite a few options for myself. When I moved to Chicago, I did so because I thought, “I've got the world at my fingertips, I have no ties, I can go wherever I want.” This (until recently) undiscovered truth is that I still do. Tomorrow, if I so choose, I could put up an ad on Craigslist for someone to sublease my apartment, apply to jobs in Dallas and move to Texas on the next flight out. I could decide Chicago isn't really my bit and look into moving to Seattle. I could decide to save up some money and move back to San Antonio to live with my mom (the least appealing of these choices, considering I don't even really know if she'd let me). The point is that I still have options, just because I opened the door to Chicago doesn't mean that I've closed any at all. I haven't even closed a door or a window or a shutter, and let me just say that the draft feels nice.
All that being said, however, I feel content with where I am. My lease is up in August and maybe by then I'll have a different mindset and I'll take the train back to Texas, eager to be closer to so many of my friends and family. Or maybe by that time I'll have made such strong relationships here that I couldn't possibly imagine leaving. Either way things work out, I need to focus on the here and now. Overall, I love where I'm at, but I'm not in love with what I'm doing. I've often expressed doubts about whether Marriott or hospitality in general is the right field of service for me, and as I go to work every day, I realize my career might not be going down the path I want it to.
I recently picked up a book by Gretchen Rubin entitled “The Happiness Project” in which Rubin, a New York wife and mother who's completely satisfied with her life, decides that she can get much more out of it. To do that, she takes a look at every aspect of her life and decides how she can better manage her time, organize her internal and external clutter, avoid irritation and explore the world around her. I've taken the smallest of tips from her, mostly about little things like organizing my closet space to remove clutter and feel happier at home, acting the way I want to feel (she states that acting as though you have energy (even if you don't) can, in fact, boost your energy levels), and avoiding irritation by not letting the little things get to me. But the big idea that I've gained from this book (which is something that had already been implanted in my brain, but sometimes I just need to hear it from someone else) is that if I'm not happy with my situation, I have the power to change it.
Despite what I feel is wrong with my current job and even my career path, I know for certain that I would like for it to change. Some people might give me advice like “stick it out” or “hang in there, maybe you'll grow to love it”, but my internal question is always “why?” Why push myself into a job I don't wholly enjoy, one that I often dread going to and get no fulfillment out of? I can't seem to find an answer to that, because I have the power to change my situation, and I fully believe that if you aren't happy with your situation, you should change it.
This glorious mindset alone has made me happier on a day-to-day basis. Going to work knowing that I just filled out applications for other jobs that might get me where I want to be makes the work bearable and fleeting. I no longer care to complain about work, and I don't dread it as much because I know there's something else out there, waiting for me to find it. Every day brings new opportunities, and every “unknown number” phone call could be my ticket to the next big thing.
My journey is nowhere near a close. I live in a room with innumerable doors and every single one of them is open to me. I can live wherever I want, work wherever I want and spend my time however I want. It took a little bit of time for me to realize that none of my choices have been made permanent, and that, even if I were to move back to Texas tomorrow, to say I moved to Chicago after graduation is an accomplishment in itself. Whether I move back in August or not, Chicago will not have defeated me or crushed my spirits. This opportunity has been the internal growth experience of a lifetime, and I couldn't possibly be happier with my decision. Every decision I have made up until now, and even going into the future, has contributed to my own personal forward motion.
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