So now what?

Well here it goes, a more personal blog post than I usually do.

Let's be honest, I don't blog often enough to make that statement but I am making it anyway.

I am having a bit of an identity crisis.  I am too young for this teenage angst and not yet old enough to be having a mid-life crisis, yet here I am, experiencing both.

Let me explain

Since leaving home right after high school graduation, I have always been on the move. I spent 4 years in college, then got married. My husband and I moved from one community to another over the first 4 years, but always within the same general area. In this time I had four different jobs, all within the same field, always experiencing a 'promotion' with each job.

Then we had our son and felt the need to live closer to family, so we made our first provincial move as a couple, from British Columbia to Manitoba. Over the next three years we moved twice in Manitoba. I got my first pastoral job, and boy was it a job. It was amazing and frustrating and scary and exhilarating all at the same time. Looking back I was awfully inexperienced to be running such a large department and at times it showed. It was a breathtakingly painful experience to work in that church. The pressure, leadership, friendship and grace were intense at times but in the end it was not a fantastic fit for me or my family, and we found ourselves moving provinces again.

This time we landed in Saskatchewan, where I worked at one church and my husband took a job at another one. We both loved what we were doing and where we were. We were developing friendships and a community until the unexpected happened. My husband was offered an amazing opportunity in Montreal, and we just had to let him take it. This left my son and I alone in SK keeping on with life in the most normal way we could. This continued for two years, until his employer offered him a permanent position and we decided to move to Montreal, ending our 4 years in SK.

Fast forward to today. We have now been in Montreal for just over three years and if you have been paying attention, 3-4 years is the longest we tend to stay in any one place. We have had the same house, church, and school for 3 years. I have already started and finished a master's degree and am starting a PhD this week.

So here is where the identity crisis starts. I don't know how to live in place past 4 years. How does one stay in a place that long? How do I take those friendships and turn them into deeper friendships? How do I challenge myself in an employment that is starting to feel like the 'same old thing'? I think that starting my PhD will help keep me challenged and excited and in many ways it will, but in some ways it won't. More schooling does not have the same excitement as starting again. There is a thrill in applying for jobs, selling homes and moving. But I know that there is a sadness and stress in them too.

I don't know how to survive in a place once the excitement has worn off. And worse than that, I don't know how to survive in a place when my polish has worn off and the others around me can see my short comings.

This lack of long term experience in a place is freaking me right out. I just want to quit everything that I am doing and pack up and move. The question is where would we go? And for what reason? Could I do that to my pre-teen son? Could I move him again when he is just really starting to make great friendships here.

I can't. I know I can't.

I guess that means I need to learn how to put down roots in a place. I need to learn how to not fear failure, knowing that I can't run away from it. Not this time. Not right now at least.

Not right now.

Why I removed Facebook from my smart phone

I love Facebook, or at least I did 4 months ago.  Now I am not so sure.  Let me explain.  When I was living in a city where I had a job, a church community and a group of really good friends that I saw on a regular basis I loved Facebook.  It was a way to connect with people that I didn't get to see very often.  I loved to snoop on what my friends where doing and to post superficial status updates about what I was watching, cooking or baking.  I felt like Facebook was a good add on to the community I had in real life.  I could ignore the overly dramatic 'vague-booking' statuses or the fear mongering news reports.  I could block the game request and unfollow the few people whose status updates I found annoying without unfriending them (don't judge, we all do it).  It was great when it was just the icing on the caking, not the cake itself.

Now that I have moved to a new city where I do not have a strong 'in-person' community yet I find that my feelings for Facebook have changed.  I find that the same type of superficial status updates that I enjoyed before now make me sad, they leave me craving 'real' contact.  At this point I would give almost anything to be able to call up a friend and meet for coffee or a glass of wine, that snooping on people who are engaging in those type of activities is hard.  Listening to people complain on Facebook about their spouses, children, neighbours, jobs or salaries is frustrating.  And being bombarded with 'end of days' media posts makes me feel ill, like I've eaten too much icing.

Now here is my problem.  I still want to stay connected with many of the people on Facebook and I know, from experience that real community can be had through social media and I love it when it works well.  I just can't have it be my only community.  I know that having Facebook in my pocket, on my phone, wherever I go is not helping me create community, it is keeping me locked in a community I can only access online.  It is too easy to sit in the church foyer after a service on Sunday checking my Facebook instead of engaging with the people around me.  It is even easier to go to the park with my son and sit on my phone scrolling through statuses instead of trying to start a conversation with another mother at the park (realistically the other parents will be on their phones too, and there is no judgment here...I've done it many times) and the same goes on the bus, commuter train or in a coffee shop.

So here is what I am going to try to see if it helps me.  I am pushing myself out of my comfort zone and removing Facebook from my phone.  I am going to see if not having Facebook so readily accessible will help me engage a bit more with the world around me, at least when I am out in public. I believe you can not create community without engaging, so this is my experiment.  I am not leaving Facebook altogether, as I still see the value in it, I am just not taking it with me wherever I go.  I will check and update Facebook at home, at a computer.  It does feel a bit strange, as I am still at this point keeping Instagram on my phone, as well as Twitter but at this moment I do not check those nearly as much as I check Facebook.  I love and appreciate all those on my Facebook, and still look forward to keeping in touch.

 I'll keep you all posted on how this works out for me.