The Leaves They Are A Changin'.

I’m packing up and moving to Maine.

At least in my mind, anyway. This feeling takes over me every year about this time and yet every year, I am surprised at its arrival. I feel almost ambushed by the ferocity with which it grabs hold of me, invading my brain so deeply, it’s almost all I can think about. I’m ready to pack it all in, move to a small little farm house and prepare myself for an autumn of apple-picking, hiking, crunching around in fallen leaves, sweater wearing and crisp, quiet air.

For a few weeks every fall I check out the real estate websites and search various towns up and down the coast. I survey independent schools and Unitarian churches to see where we would best fit. I start imagining a new life – one less stressed, over packed with stuff, following our dreams of living more simply and more in tune with our world. I may even learn to knit. Just send me your sock size!

The problem is that this picture of life contradicts my other dream- the one that involves the West Coast- having my daughters grow up at the beach and on the ocean. The dream of writing television comedy and making people laugh. Living larger than life, participating in the absurd.

And then there is the present where we dwell somewhere in-between these two fictional existences. We live in a small town that is close to two big cities. We get all four seasons, even if fall remains a little warmer than I’d like and the summer is just obscene in terms of the humidity index. Pickle attends a school that we all love. We’re members of a church that we find challenging, enriching and life-sustaining. We can both hike and go to the beach here, although we often do neither.

And I think that’s the real issue. My life is dangerously off-course from where I’d like it to be in many, many ways. I focus (aka obsess) on things that pollute my time and energy. I become paralyzed with fear and instead of taking action, I stress myself out over things that would change dramatically with just the smallest of steps. I wish for change, but I want someone else to do the changing for me. I am one of those people for whom making a decision is always life or death so I am unable to choose. I look for the perfect answer, I crave clarity with every step, determined that if I research all the options long enough, squint hard enough and cock my head just so, everything will come into focus and the right path, the perfect one, my Holy Grail, will open up before me and all I have to do is walk through the light to be there.

Just as a reality check, I do realize how ridiculous those last few statements sound even before they leave my head and spill out on the paper. But we’re not talking about logic here; we’re talking about the freak-out zone in my brain known as emotion.

The irony to all of this is that I know that the road is fuzzy, murky, or in my case, as dark as a coalmine. And if you came to me with the same fears, the same questions about your life, I would confidently tell you that it doesn’t matter which step you take first as long as you take a step. And I would believe it with my whole heart. As many of you know, I am incredibly intuitive. The problem is that when my intuition turns inward, I ignore it, chastise it, belittle it and basically send it muttering back off into the far reaches of my brain, giving the finger to me as it walks away. All of which I rightly deserve. But you can see why I’ve ended up so far astray.

So instead of looking at Maine real estate or checking out new congregations and schools, this fall I’m trying to breathe through that anxiety and instead, focus the need for change on the present, the here, the known. It all sounds very Zen and neatly tied up doesn’t it? For the record, I’m not delusional enough to think that this revelation is going to be enough to change everything (and I mean EVERYTHING!) that I am unhappy with within myself. But it does me that I am going to put a little more faith in myself and my intuition and take those first few unknown steps into the mineshaft – I’ll try to keep the squinting to a minimum but I make no promises about the freaking-out part.