The Nomading Life I Lead

I hate moving. In my lifetime I have lived in 20 different houses, in three different states, in six different cities, and two different time zones. I would like to say that I have also only moved 20 times, but that would be too simple, because between moving in and out of dorms, shacks, basements, government housing, my parent's many homes, and my in-laws, the number of time I've moved may be close to thirty. That basically equates to about a move a year, not that I lived in each place a year and then moved.

There were some places I have lived in for a year or two, others I lived in for only a month: 7 months, 3 months, and still others I wished I hadn't lived in for no more than a few hours. My longest has been five years. As a kid, I vowed that I would never move more than just a couple times. I would be in control of my life, and I would be wiser and more decisive than my mother who dragged me across the country on what often seemed like a whim. I was nothing more than a piece of luggage to her then.

Now that I am older and wiser and in control of my life, I have realized that there is only so much control we have. That so many of our choices and decisions are driven by circumstance, by chance, by our bank accounts, by our jobs, by the people we love, by changing attitudes and lifestyles, and by all other mysterious or not so mysterious forces we call life. Nothing is ever black and white, its all a very murky gray. This of course is not a realization I just happened upon today. I am not that naive, although I am one of those people who sometimes needs to learn things the hard way. I have also come to realize that I am not a decisive person and may never be, and I do realize that this has led to missed opportunities and wasted time.

We have gone back and forth on our most recent decision to move about a hundred times already, and every decision has a weighty number of pros and and its equally strong cons, so much so that each decision seems like the right one and the wrong one all at the same time -- a decision that can be easily swayed by our mood. We are at a point where we are trying to prioritize our mental list, but really we are just going to drive forward with our decision to move.

Oh, and do I loathe the whole moving process. The planning, the packing, the carrying of heavy stuff, the canceling of utilities, the renting of a moving truck, the renting of the house we now own, the fixing up the house we now own, the finding new schools, new friends, new tenants, new jobs, and so much more that would just add to an endless list of boring details if I continued on in this manner. But really, wasn't life much simpler when we were childless and out of college when all that needed to be moved could be fit in a small trunk of a Mazda Protege, and the only person that needed to be notified was our mother. Life is about making sacrifices, and we have decide to make the sacrifice of moving and losing our own home so that we can live in the same area code as our family - well, at least part of it.