A Whole New World

So lately I've had the song A Whole New World from Aladdin stuck in my head which is kind of funny because I haven't seen it anytime recently and its not one of the Disney movies I've seen a lot.  Don't get me a wrong, I love Aladdin, but I've always been more of a Little Mermaid/Beauty and the Beast kind of girl.  But I digress.  I couldn't figure out why that song was stuck in my head and then suddenly it just sort of clicked.  I've been thinking about my life a lot since the beginning of the year with trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.  Right now I feel very stuck, very caged in.  I'm stuck in a dead-end job that I hate with a passion, stuck with no real future it feels like, stuck in a place where there aren't very many opportunities in any of the various activities or hobbies that I enjoy.  Again, don't get me wrong, I love New Mexico, I was born and raised here, but its not exactly a bustling state where you have all kinds of different opportunities or jobs in the areas that I enjoy.

So I've been thinking more and more that I want to go somewhere.  I want to do something with my life, something different from what its been for the last year which essentially consisted of going to work, going home, sleeping, repeat.  Except, of course, for Mondays when I hang out with my friends, but otherwise its the same old cycle every single day and I hate it.  I keep thinking of just packing up and moving to L.A. or to London or New Zealand, finding a job, settling down for a few years and then moving again.  That or I keep thinking of going part-time at my job so I can focus some more on me which sounds incredibly selfish I know, but for once in my life, I would like to be down to a healthy weight, I want some time to explore who I am and what I want out of life.  I've started to realize that ever since graduating high school I've been wandering, not sure where I was going or what I was doing.  I've jumped from job to job, never staying for more than a year.  I've attended two different colleges and left both.  I feel restless, I feel bored, I feel lost.  There's got to be more than this life that I'm living now, something more exciting, something more worthwhile.  Which is why I guess I've been thinking about traveling more, because that's exciting, that's different.  I have a board on Pinterest that's filled with all the places I would like to visit, over a hundred places, cities, and countries.

But traveling costs money and taking time off work and figuring out a million and one other things.  I've read about other people who struggled with that and then also found some interesting articles about people, generally single or young couples who would do what I've been thinking of doing.  Move to another city, state, country, find a job and live there for a year or more and take in the sights, absorb the culture, etc. until they were ready to move on.  Of course there are challenges to that kind of lifestyle.  What if you can't find a job, what if you get fired, how do you find someplace to live, etc., etc.  There are a million things to think about with that kind of living.  But its an adventure, you certainly can't say that its boring.  This isn't something I'm going to do right away, I'm more thinking about going to part-time and really starting to work at losing the weight and working through some other parts of my life, but its something I'd like to do in the next year or two if that desire is still there.  I don't really expect my life to change much in the coming year or next couple of years even, but, hey, you never know what might happen.  I just want to get rid of this feeling that I'm getting older and not going anywhere with my life.  Yes, I know, I'm still young, but I turn 23 in, what, 3 months?  Yup.  I know people younger than me who will tell me that they've done this and this and this and this and I'm just like I work full-time and that's basically it.  I haven't done anything exciting in my life really.

You know, when I was younger I always wished that Gandalf would appear and ask me if I wanted to go on an adventure or that I would receive my Hogwarts letter or that I would open my closet and find Narnia.  In more recent times I've wished that I'd hear the sound of the TARDIS and it would be the Doctor offering to take me on some grand adventure through time and space.  I wanted them to take me somewhere new and exciting, I wanted to go on an adventure.  I know none of its real, of course I do, but maybe its the child in me that's still always dreamed that maybe, just maybe it could come true.  Silly I know, but books, movies, tv shows, they've always been my escape from reality, something I could bring alive with my imagination and find hope and courage and comfort in.  So I know I'm not going to be asked to go on some grand adventure by any of the beloved characters that live in my mind, but they can keep inspiring me to seek out grand adventures of my own.