From a conversation I had, recently:
Her: How goes?
Me: It goes. I feel overwhelmed, as always.
Her: I feel underwhelmed.
Me: By?
Her: My life right now.
It seems not a week goes by that I don’t have some version of this conversation with someone. And I’m not some world-beating master motivator — I’m occasionally the underwhelmed one.
So what’s the fix?
I think my friend knows what to do, what she’ll do. I submit most people know how to fix whatever situation they’re in. But knowing something and doing something are two different things.
I stayed in Montréal years too long even though I knew I wasn’t going to end up where I wanted to. If I had to say why, I’d probably say “love.” But it wasn’t love, not really. I didn’t leave when I thought it was a good idea because I fooled myself into thinking that something that wasn’t going to happen (a certain kind of promotion) had an outside chance of happening, when in reality I knew it had no chance of happening. I also just resisted the idea of change. To me, acknowledging that something else might be a better fit or that another city could be a better place for me was tantamount to treason.
I left Montréal in 2009 and I’ve never really regretted it. A friend once told me that I’d enjoy Montréal so much more if and when I returned with money. I didn’t know what she meant, then, and, as I don’t have money now, I still don’t know what that means. I guess I just think that to me Montréal has become that proverbial place that’s great to visit but in which you wouldn’t want to live. Except I did. And I know, now, truly, how much sense that makes.
I think that a lot of the time, we know what we should do, and we know what we want to do, and when those two things are at odds, we avoid the things we should do almost every time. Why the fuck would anyone ever do that?
Irony: In writing this blog post I am not doing a few things I should be doing right now.