moving

the decision to move is a strange one. for most of my life, I assumed that I will never move. I loved my city, my locality, my home. whenever anyone brought up the thought of moving, I had a score of reasons to justify not wanting to.

the first move was pretty simple. it was time to move out of my parents home. and though I loved the locality (and still do!), the commute was killing. and the move was not too far off. pretty much halfway between my then home and office. and it was pretty smooth. I moved in two steps: first, the minimum stuff that I needed to be able to live in the new home, and then the day I actually moved, two bags of my clothes and stuff.

adjusting to the new place took longer, but it wasn't just about changing location: it was mainly about moving out from my parents home, and it was also about adjusting to living with my wife.

a few months later, it felt like we were settled in. we had moved with the intention of staying put for a fair amount of time, and we had planned it accordingly, with no stop-gap measures. and then came an unexpected career opportunity. although we had plenty of time to think about it after the decision, the decision was made on the spur of the moment. we decided to take the leap. and surprisingly, although the cause was the career opportunity and the effect was the move, it sometimes feels like it was the other way around.

as a friend was saying the other day, unexpected opportunities do not happen by accident. you have to work, consciously or subconsciously, towards enabling them. it could networking, keeping "a ear on the ground", or just giving luck a free hand by keeping an open mind.

and so, this move seems almost predestined, despite not being so. it's a move of a lot larger magnitude than anything we've planned or done before, although there are literally scores of friends who have done a similar move, (I'm assuming) successfully. and they've all done it in one go. planning, taking their chances (calculated and uncalculated), and taking the leap of faith. of course, there are the countless people who refused to move, for various reasons. I'll probably never know why, or if their reasons were valid or imagined.

but before we actually jump ship, it's nice to think back about the reasons I initially had for not moving, and what has changed. and I'm surprised at how much my perspective has changed after my first move. it all seems to make sense in a beautiful way.

cheers to moving!