I find myself restless, this time of year. I can't really say why, but it's always in September, just after my birthday that I begin to feel like something is off. I can't say that I feel like I'm in a funk, this year, like I did last year. It's far from that. I find myself happier at this point in my life. I have a job that I can be happy at, I am initiated, I am at a good place in my relationship, and I see my family fairly regularly, finances aren't great, but they'll get to where they need to be. Just the same, something feels like it's missing and I can't say what. I feel a longing for something, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is that I feel is missing. I'm a firm believer that if you don't find it within yourself that you won't find it outside yourself, so I have to ask myself what part of me is feels separate from the rest of me? What have I sectioned off for whatever reason? I know that I have learned to survive in this life by compartmentalizing different aspects and not allowing them to mix. But until recently, I haven't felt as restless as I do now.
The more I think about when I start to feel this restless feeling each year, the more I realize that I've always felt this way, but it's been magnified over the past two years since I've been out of school. Is it the routine I miss? I have a different routine that has replaced the school routine, so is that really my issue? Is 20 years of some sort of school routine and then the loss of that what's really throwing me off? Living in a city, I've lost that slow transition that comes from living in a rural farming area. I find these strange seasons a bit jarring. They don't transition quite the same here as they do in a farm town. You don't see the plowing, planting, nurturing of said plants, harvesting, dying off, and repeating of the cycle, in the city. Instead you wake up and it's spring, and then you wake up and it's summer, and then you wake up and it's fall, and then you wake up and it's winter. Wash, rinse, repeat. The seasons almost have a sterile quality to them. It's not something that I ever thought I might miss since I guess you could say it was always something I took for granted. It was the farming that drove me crazy, living there, but it was also how I subconsciously marked time, I suppose. Is my sense of time disrupted? I don't know if that's where my sense of restlessness and longing comes from.
Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm missing out on something. There's something I'm not doing that I should be doing. I don't want to say that there's something I don't have that I should have since I'm not big on material possessions if it's not something I don't have already. I'll admit I'm a bit of a pack rat and have a hard time letting go of current possessions, but at the same time I'm practical when it comes to acquiring new things. I know this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but work with me here. So what's missing? What am I not doing? Is there something non-material that I feel like I'm missing? I can't quite figure it out.
