What Am I Waiting For?

My West Coast friends have been urging me, "Come on, just move out here already..."

My New York friends flash their eyes in panic, "Oh my God, what are you going to DO?"

I went to look at an apartment today in a town I don't know if I want to stay in, in a neighborhood I don't think I want to move to, in a space I would have to unfortunately share with someone with whom I am not romantically linked. Yes, the place is available. Yes, it is clean and nice. Yes, the price is right.

But it was the first apartment I'd gone to see in nearly seven years, and so I asked the current tenant - my potential future roommate - to give me a few days.

Why wait?

Because I feel like I need a reason to make whatever my next move is. I'm dying for New York (or its residents) to give me a reason to stay, but at least I'm already here. Complacence might just keep me here because for whatever reason, I need something to pull me out to California. Life's tide is not just drifting me out there.

I'm not choosing not to decide. I'm just waiting until the last possible moment. I'm waiting for an answer to be revealed to me.

When I was considering quitting my job in 2008, it took me a full six months to finally do it. I kept mentally delaying the process - after I return from Morocco, then after Labor Day, then after my birthday, then after Halloween, then after New Year's, then finally after I returned from a business trip to Turks & Caicos, an icing on my professional career that I felt I'd earned and deserved. Once I settled on that date, I knew it was right.

I've considered dozens of options of how to live the next of my life, from joining the Peace Corps to buying an RV to embracing homelessness, but so far, every option has turned against me in one way or another. I figured the one thing that might keep me in New York - besides a job - was the opportunity to have a real romantic relationship, something that feels worth staying for. But although I've caught a glimpse of a glimmer of hope a couple of times over the last six months, my dates and potential mates continue to cancel, avoid, overpromise, underdeliver, and pretty much altogether disappear without explanation.

I have just over three weeks left on my lease, and now I know, it's too late. No one is going to ask me to stay. No one wants that kind of responsibility.

And no one is asking me to move anywhere else.

The entire world is one big blank slate. I will be somewhere in it on my own (naturally). And only I can choose what to do next.

Thankfully, three weeks is enough time to get serious with a potential employer, and to seriously romance future clients. It's enough time for a miracle to happen (or, as my sister puts it, magic to happen in a most unexpected way).

But am I, once again, waiting for something that will never arrive?

My hope is that I will have something to run toward instead of run away from. It was hard enough running away from a job I couldn't stay in any longer. The only thing that allowed me to do it was the thought that I was running toward something I couldn't identify yet.

I still can't, but I'm still looking for it.

In the meantime, the clock is ticking...

Related Posts:
Open Letter to the Universe (Avoiding Regret)
Disregarding Deadlines (Avoiding Regret)

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