restless

I'm restless.

I've been satisfied with my quiet, simple life for so long, because it's not a bad life at all. I have a job that pays the bills. I live with 3 amazing women. I have friends that mean the world to me. I have the support of a loving family. I have so much, so quiet and simple have been enough for me.

I can't quite pinpoint when that all began to change, really, but it's changed. I'm not dissatisfied, necessarily. Just restless. I'm ready for something bigger. Something grand, something new, something exciting.

I've got those internal jitters that dissuade me from going to sleep at night. Not because I'm not tired, because I am. But my thoughts and feelings are bouncing around me, colliding with one another and making my nerves stand on end. And the thought of going to sleep only to wake up to another quiet, boring day at a boring job makes me almost queasy.

Because I want to wake up and go to Greece. I want to go to Finland and sleep in an igloo and see the northern lights and play with husky puppies. I want to see Machu Picchu.  I want to meet strange and interesting people who have stories that surprise and shock me. I want to have the kinds of experiences that will give me surprising and shocking stories of my own. I want to be out of my element. I want to be that quaky kind of uncomfortable and nervous that you feel only when something amazing is going to happen. I want to have my breath taken away.


I'm the little boy in the tricycle in The Incredibles. "What are you waiting for?" you ask me.

"I don't know," I say, shrugging. "Something amazing, I guess."


So I'm just here waiting. I'm staying up way too late, scrolling through picture after picture of the beautiful and interesting and historical places that the world has to offer. I'm nearly brought to tears by the pure splendor of places halfway across the world and by the deeply rooted fear that I'll never get to see any of them.

I want to visit Normandy, I want to ride in a gondola in Venice and a double-decker bus in London. I want to explore all the lighthouses the East Coast has to offer and find freezing cold lakes hidden in dense forests. I want to explore cities and countrysides and everything in between.

I want to go, I want to live, I want to find adventure.

For the past few years, I've been more than okay with the idea of living a quiet, normal life and taking the traditional path into adulthood: college, career, marriage, babies, retirement. I certainly don't think there is anything wrong with that path. But now I'm not sure I'm ready to settle down. I know I want to someday, and maybe that day is much sooner than I think it is, but I can't deny that I want to explore first. I want at least a small dose of unconventional in my very, very conventional life.

Maybe I'll find adventure in a more traditional route. Maybe I'll spend my whole life clicking through picture after picture of the places in the world I want to see and never get to see them in person.

Whatever the case, I'm determined to be happy and content. I want to experience life, not just live it—even if my life does proceed down the path of normalcy I'm on and never branches off into more adventurous territory. I believe happiness is just as obtainable in the suburbs of Wichita as it is overlooking the cobalt waters of the Aegean Sea in Santorini.

So for now, I'll stop looking at pictures of tulip fields in Holland and finish planning the Easter dinner I'm having with my brothers and roommates and friends. I'll crawl in my nearby bed and dream of faraway places. I'll wake up in the morning and drive to American Fork instead of flying off to Thailand.

And I'll be happy. And restless.

But mostly happy.