Where'd you go?

I have a tendency to cut and run. Not just in everyday stuff, "I'm bored here, let's bail" sort of thing, but even in significant situations like relationships, living situations, time zones. Thing is, I think it's an extension of that everyday boredom that ultimately drives me to make drastic life decisions. I like to live the life of a nomad and when I start to accrue too much stuff or feel too established in a place I start to get itchy.

I was talking to a friend of mine last night from Oakland. I've relocated to the other side of the country now, back to where I grew up, in the Washington DC area.  California was my home for seven years, I had a family of friends, a sweet apartment and a job I liked.  In response to all of these things, I moved 3,000 miles away to start over again.

Stability makes me uncomfortable. I feel like it lets my brain idle and to be honest, I think that's the worst thing in the world. Really.  Psychologically.  Deeply.  I believe boredom will destroy me.  I need to be juggling a few swords at all times while spinning a plate or two as well.  If I get too comfortable I get curious about what else is out there.  I want to explore.

Don't get me wrong, I could, in theory, find somewhere to call home and would always return to.  It could be a place, it could be a person.  Having a single fixed point of stability in life is necessary, like the sun in a solar system, but I love the moving parts around the fixed point.  I will orbit.  Ideal job would allow me to travel all over but intermittently return to my fixed point.  It couldn't be a traditional setup, but whatever. If that's meant to happen it will.

So my friend from Oakland (the fast-ender, in fact) laughed when I told him I'd just gotten too comfortable so I uprooted and bailed. In fact, I think I told him if he'd been meaner to me I might have stayed. It was weird to hear myself say that concept aloud.  I think it's at the heart of my anxiety, really. I'm afraid to be idly comfortable because I never had an idle moment as a kid.  I just went from school to sports to homework to bed without a second to breathe in between.  As a result my brain processes and deconstructs situations at the speed of light and then it sits there, vibrating like a springer spaniel on point, and asks "now what?"

When I get idle I get self-destructive just to have something to recover from.  It's like getting tattoos so the healing period can put the passage of time into tangible form. If I knew how to get drugs I swear there are moments I would be all over it just to experience something new, to shut my brain up for a minute.  I'm trying to figure out constructive ways to keep my brain occupied.  Ugh, it's a process. But I'm working on it.  Being in DC with all the free museums and monuments and great public transit is helping. Seeing friends I haven't seen in years is helping too.  Aw, hell, that's all life is, isn't it?  We've got so much time and we're all trying to find the "best" way to use it.