A little over a year ago, I sat down to lunch with Samir, my former boss in Boston. He told me, you know, sometimes it's the little moves that make big changes to the direction of your life. I came to Boston when I was barely 20 after my brother suggested I come here and work. Samir is now one of the senior partners of one of the more successful architecture firms in Boston.
I love to travel, I love to see new things and to plunge into the depths of different places around the world. There is such work to be done everywhere. New places shift the mind into high gear- you question and pay attention to everything. It's a way to really see problems and solutions hidden in plain view. It is a characteristic of people to take familiarity for granted.
However, I'm really bad at life changes, I hate it and instead of celebrating new and unexpected futures, I get really depressed when I leave. After 20 years there, I was mostly happy to leave Phoenix. I felt like I was just getting the hang of Boston and the pleasures of the east coast when I left, and I was beginning to be really comfortable in St. Louis. I'm still a gringo here, and sometimes the feelings of alienation are overwhelming, but my departure from Mexico City feels premature too. There is a richness and complexity here, a city which feels tantalizingly bursting with potential.
At this point the writing on the wall is an unconventional career path, and I'm totally ok with that- as long as its going somewhere, and I can pay down my loans and save a little, forget drafting Wal-Marts.
It's just part of the bargain- you can't keep traveling the world and become a local everywhere without the pain of leaving behind friends and interests. It is the road to the perfect taco, the best sunset, the leading edge of what is happening now.
On the flip side, it's the hard path- if you stop pushing, you roll to a stop, you end up working in the same company for fifteen years in the same town, your friends become a deep part of your life and the ChiChi's enchilada plate is really not that bad and they have buy-one-get-one frozen margaritas on Thursdays.
I exaggerate, but four to five years feels like a good amount of time to spend in one place. And probably, that's about the right amount of time to work at any one place too.
I love to travel, I love to see new things and to plunge into the depths of different places around the world. There is such work to be done everywhere. New places shift the mind into high gear- you question and pay attention to everything. It's a way to really see problems and solutions hidden in plain view. It is a characteristic of people to take familiarity for granted.
However, I'm really bad at life changes, I hate it and instead of celebrating new and unexpected futures, I get really depressed when I leave. After 20 years there, I was mostly happy to leave Phoenix. I felt like I was just getting the hang of Boston and the pleasures of the east coast when I left, and I was beginning to be really comfortable in St. Louis. I'm still a gringo here, and sometimes the feelings of alienation are overwhelming, but my departure from Mexico City feels premature too. There is a richness and complexity here, a city which feels tantalizingly bursting with potential.
At this point the writing on the wall is an unconventional career path, and I'm totally ok with that- as long as its going somewhere, and I can pay down my loans and save a little, forget drafting Wal-Marts.
It's just part of the bargain- you can't keep traveling the world and become a local everywhere without the pain of leaving behind friends and interests. It is the road to the perfect taco, the best sunset, the leading edge of what is happening now.
On the flip side, it's the hard path- if you stop pushing, you roll to a stop, you end up working in the same company for fifteen years in the same town, your friends become a deep part of your life and the ChiChi's enchilada plate is really not that bad and they have buy-one-get-one frozen margaritas on Thursdays.
I exaggerate, but four to five years feels like a good amount of time to spend in one place. And probably, that's about the right amount of time to work at any one place too.
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