Transitions.... AGAIN?!?! Getting the heart and the head to get along.

So I don't want this blog to be too diary-ish, but my current situation swirls around in my head everyday.... any fresh perspectives on the the situation are welcome.

Transitions...
I feel another big one at my front door.

Funny -- growing up I always had this idea that after you finish school and find your mate and have kids and get your career on, you hit cruise control and everything just kinda plateaus.  It's so glaringly clear to me now that it is never-ending -- our changing morphing shifting learning is the very fabric of life.  So get nimble, right?!

The last few years have been a practice in nimbleness for sure.  When I look back I am astonished at how many boxes I've packed and moved and unpacked and repacked and removed and.... you get the idea.  Each new chapter involved a different bedroom and a different hairdo.  And all of this was just the physical representation of the accelerated course my soul has been on throughout the packing and moving. 

It all began with The Break-Up (like so many things do!).  I thought I had found My Man and that we were embarking on The Rest of It together.  Nope.  So there was the disassembly of Life With Max -- the wretching, rapid move into storage, couch surfing and tear-stained pillows.

Then there was the year of  The Urban Monk Warrior Superhero.  I unpacked boxes and shaved a mohawk and entered my self-imposed healing social exile into a focused stint of meditation, running, counseling, raw food and school.

Then I repacked and moved again into the 9 month gestation in isolation ... The Hermit In The House At The End of The Dirt Road in The Middle of Nowhere chapter.  I spent much of this time finishing my coursework and final collection at school.

This quiet gestation gave birth to more storage and gypsy time which ended in a stint in Bali where I happily lived out of my suitcase and designed a line of clothes in celebration of my completed course in fashion design.

Then back to San Francisco and friends' couches.  I'll never forget the day when I was feeling so ungrounded that the most comforting thing I could think up to do was to pull my station wagon up to my storage unit, pop-up the back, raise up the door of my unit, gaze at my Things from the hatchback and smoke a cigarette (something I had quit doing before that day).

Luckily, I found a place for next to nothing, moved my boxes into my new home and unpacked again.... only to find out that, unluckily, I had moved in with a certifiably crazy woman.  And I mean Certifiable.

So there was repacking and moving and unpacking down the street with a couple of guys that seemed pretty cool.    Then they both tried to kiss me within the first month and I realized that it wasn't the ideal home situation.

Obviously it was time to get my own place.  Work was going well so I also decided that career-wise, it was high time that I get the rest of my own teleprompting gear as well.  Surely after finding the most magical cottage on the planet and focusing on building my freelance business, I would be content and settled, right?  I could unpack for awhile this time.  Exhale.  Pass the moving boxes and baton onto some other wandering soul.  Right?!

Ya I dunno.

You see, I felt wide open and unattached upon my return from Bali (years of this nimbleness practice will do that to you).  I felt very unattached to San Francisco and felt a pull toward Brooklyn or Manhattan.  However, I had just spent all my money on my project in Bali and as soon as I got to San Francisco, I started receiving calls for work.  I was surprised I hadn't been forgotten and was thankful for the work.  I thought I'd save up some money and then maybe head out there at a later date.

Then I kinda forgot.
Until I visited my little sis in Brooklyn last month.
And it all came rushing back in -- the sights the sounds the textures the colors the conversations the nitty gritty city dirty real east coastness off it all woke me up from the lazy hazy lull of west coast living.

The truth is, I've never found my groove again in SF since The Break-Up in 2005.  Now I feel like I'm in a bit of a dead end relationship with San Francisco and it may be time for another break-up of sorts.   My relationship with San Francisco is familiar, it's easy, it's comfortable, but it is no longer feeding my soul.

The learning curve of the last few years has been steep.  With each move I have stretched and learned and become a slightly different woman.  I've grown and changed so much that I am no longer resonating with much in San Francisco.  I've been a little bored and uninterested in the culture and believe that I most likely have learned what I came here to learn.

It's as if I'm in an eddy at the edge of the river swirling around and around and not really going anywhere.

My heart is telling me to jump back into the current and head east.  My gut is telling me that that is where the growth is.  But my head is pulling hard on the reigns.  My voice of consciousness from the Midwest is telling me that it makes no sense to go there without a job lined up.  And if I'm planning on continuing my life as a freelancer with my own teleprompting company, it could be a very very challenging transition to go somewhere where no one knows me.  My voices of self doubt and fear tell me I'm not ready -- I don't have enough money to make a transition as a freelancer and I don't have the skills and resume yet to get a decent job in fashion.  I fear that I may go there and end up broke and feeling ungrounded. 

I take all that and weigh it against my heart which is tugging at me like a kid tugs her mother's hand as they pass by the candy shop.  I want to go noooow! 

What is the most wise, brave way to move forward?  I don't want to be impetuous or immature by packing up and moving and then find myself spending a couple of years getting on my feet again.  Am I really up for another uproot?  However,  I also know that I don't do well ignoring my heart.  I never have.  I want to be challenged and grow and evolve -- in the most graceful, wise way possible.

What does that look like?!