Someone once told me it’s good to change things up every now and then.
I finally took their advice.
The decision did not come easily and involved the scary reality of abandoning a job that was my livelihood these past almost 11 years.
My living in Colorado dates back to 1983. It was an adventuresome time for a young man driving across the country, whose destination was Bisbee, AZ, but who ultimately landed in Boulder and remained for most of these past three decades. I still have not made it to Bisbee.
I must have liked it here, huh.
I have and it’s been a great run, but at the close of last year I felt a nagging suspicion that my time living full-time in this great state was somehow coming to an end.
It’s never what, how, why or exactly when you think it will be, though.
That’s why, although astrology and psychics were part of the doings of many people I met out here along the way, personally I never lent them much credence.
No one can predict the future, say what will happen, and no matter which presidential candidate you put your faith in, all the rhetoric and promises the candidates and citizenry alike make will not guarantee how any of it turns out in the end.
We have convenient and selective memories regarding how much of what we have thought out in advance actually occurs.
Oftentimes we make plans. Sometimes our jobs involve forecasting the future of a particular sector of business we are knowledgeable in. We gather information and we use our heads to make these plans and forecasts.
All this time in one of the most beautiful places on the planet to be, I’ve lived life ruled by decisions emanating from my head. Functioning in this manner allowed me to be safe, to not be vulnerable, to make plans and decisions without respect to what I was feeling in my heart.
Allowing my heart to guide me now has some people feeling I have lost my mind.
Some people say do not leave the rational, sensible security of one situation, for the uncertainty of another with seemingly less (on the outside looking in) prospects for said security and sensibility.
In all the economic carnage this country has had to endure the past several years, I understand the tendency to feel it best to hold tight to what feels like stability, a paycheck, the ability to purchase necessities like food, fuel, and I say I am aware of all of this.
And it’s funny…
I do not believe I am gambling in the least.
For I do not apologize permitting my heart to guide me this time, nor will I ever again in the future—no matter what becomes of myself or what the decision looks like years from now—I know in my heart, not my head, this is right, and it is right for me, right now and in whatever may come.
My life has hardly been wasted this past decade working nights.
Sure, I was at many times feeling isolated, maybe, feeling like sometimes all I ever did was eat, work and sleep.
But putting in the time I have doing all that allowed me to be surer about the decision to leave. And besides, if we always need to be one hundred percent certain before making a decision, we’d never make a darn one of them.
My story was perhaps growing a bit stagnant.
A visit from an old friend recently helped validate the change I was to embark on.
He has known me for 30 years, originally from New York like myself, but we never met until we worked a fast food job in the old Crossroads Mall in Boulder.
He recognized my confidence and excitement at leaving here when he saw me again this past weekend. He never said it, but I think it was the same confidence and excitement in my eyes and on my face that he saw when he first met me all those years ago.
I go boldly onward, pausing to occasionally reflect on family, friends, but living life the way I choose.
Your chances for doing so similarly improve, once, like me, your heart, and not your head, guides you.