{"id":2055,"date":"2011-09-02T06:05:17","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T10:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/52.52.55.152\/?p=2055"},"modified":"2011-09-02T06:05:17","modified_gmt":"2011-09-02T10:05:17","slug":"take-a-deep-breath-and-jump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/?p=2055","title":{"rendered":"Take a Deep Breath and Jump!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m feeling bold and unpredictable, stale and unchallenged (at least under-challenged).  It&#8217;s time for a change.  A drastic one.<\/p>\n<p>As I work through this on-going process of finding myself again, I&#8217;m re-discovering the core essence of my being.  I long to express my exuberant, energetic, fun and quirky inner child on a daily basis.  I long to express and utilize my natural creativity regularly and in a manner that is profitable.  I feel restless, completely unfulfilled and seriously in need of a challenge.<\/p>\n<p>The other week, I was talking to Terry and realized that I am desperately, desperately unhappy.  It really is true that money can&#8217;t buy you happiness.  I feel guilty that, from the outside looking in, I seem to have a great life, with a good, stable job and just about everything I could want.  And yet, I weep with an uncontrollable sadness that wells up from deep inside of me.  I am not doing what makes me happy.  I am not expressing myself creatively, through art, music or dance.  Sure, I try to attend a Zumba class once a week, dance around my house and sing\/listen to music for hours on end whenever I can (daily, if I&#8217;m lucky), but it&#8217;s just not enough.  I&#8217;m not feeling challenged and I&#8217;ve come to realize that I&#8217;m not happy unless I&#8217;m stretching myself and pushing my boundaries.  I think that I crave being forced just slightly out of my comfort zone and, for years, I&#8217;ve been comfortably numb, but it&#8217;s all coming to a head now.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve talked about moving to a large city for several years now.  I have no desire to live in Philadelphia and New York City doesn&#8217;t hold any real appeal for me.  London was an original thought, but the rain and cold would not be good for my headaches and\/or joints.  Plus the cost of living is sky-high.  So now my thoughts are turning to the west coast.  What do I want to do?  I don&#8217;t know.  Where do I want to live?  I don&#8217;t know, but I&#8217;m sure that figuring out what I want to do will help to dictate a location.  I realize that it&#8217;s going to take me a while to figure things out, but I&#8217;ve made the decision to enact radical changes in my life and start moving in the right direction towards true happiness.  Fortunately, I have the support of (most of) my family and my husband, who is willing to take the leap with me wherever I decide to go.  I have always known that home is wherever my husband is and to have him behind me 100% makes this journey so much easier.  I already have a fall-back plan in mind, but no big picture plan.  Yet.  Just making the decision to make a plan, though, has begun to quell the growing restlessness that I&#8217;ve been experiencing.  We figure that it will take about 2 years before we can fully flesh things out and start enacting a plan.  Some days that feels like a long time and some days it feels like it&#8217;s right around the corner.  Regardless, it&#8217;s movement, which is what I need.<\/p>\n<p>The most important thing is to not be afraid.  After all, what&#8217;s the worst thing that can happen?  I can fail.  Well, okay then.  I always have tried and true skills that I can fall back upon and I can pick up new ones in no time flat.  But to be afraid to try is something that I would regret and I try to live a life without regret.  So I&#8217;m ready to jump.  I don&#8217;t know how far down the water is or what dive I&#8217;m going to execute, but I have time in the air to figure it out.<\/p>\n<p>In the words of Chicago Tribune writer Mary Schmich: &#8220;Don&#8217;t feel guilty if you don&#8217;t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn&#8217;t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don&#8217;t.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>Apparently, I&#8217;m very interesting.  \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m feeling bold and unpredictable, stale and unchallenged (at least under-challenged). It&#8217;s time for a change. A drastic one. As I work through this on-going process of finding myself again, I&#8217;m re-discovering the core essence of my being. I long &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/?p=2055\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2055"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2061,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055\/revisions\/2061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennamagee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}