“This is all we need. And this is where we start. This is the day we greet. This is the day, no other.’ – Vienna Teng, Level Up.
Move. Movement. Moving. The act of going forward. To progress.
I recently wrote a post about saying yes to opportunity, to taking risks and breaking routines, to trying new things and accepting challenges. This was my September challenge to myself. In that time I took up ballet, attended a few concerts and ate some crazy foods.
But most of all, my September post was about my younger brother and his decision to move to New York City and his action motivating me to take on my own. ‘You can always come back,’ I said. ‘But the opportunity to go doesn’t always happen. You have to take the chance.’ And so, heeding my opinion and confirming his own decision, he quit his job and is packing up this week. It was time, in a sense to heed my own.
Moving and relocating, for lack of a better term, sucks. It sucks more when it’s not you. When you are left standing still, feeling in routine, not a groove; while others pack up, drive off, and move forward.
While my brother prepares for a life’s journey he will never forget, in a City that notoriously eats the weak, and provides the strong with 24/7 opportunities to excel and succeed — I reflect on my busy schedule and my go-go-going from one activity to another like a child being carted through school activities, practices and piano lessons. While he is off to the City that never sleeps, I am jogging on a mudslide; sprinting in a marathon — in northeast Ohio.
Not only is my brother relocating this week, two more friends have announced their too-soon-for-me relocations. (Come on, guys! We’re in the best of the Midwest.) Regardless of how hard I work, how happy I am in my current career and position; how I am finally feeling like I am really building a network and therefore, couldn’t think to leave — there is an overwhelming sense of being left behind; the fear of complacency; and the bittersweet joy and sadness for my own selfish reasons. If only I could feel how they feel, to feel the freedom to leave without any emotional attachment.
New opportunities await those who move.
It was one year ago this week I left a 4.5-year career with a local consulting engineering firm to join ARCADIS as the Client Development Marketing Specialist for transportation and infrastructure design in Ohio. I knew very little of infrastructure design and at the time was completely skeptical. It’s a road. Well, I have learned to absolutely love it. Who knew transportation and bridge designs could be so fascinating?
Leaving my first real job in a career industry I never thought I would work — or even fathomed existed — was by far the most difficult decision of my adult life. I felt a strong sense of loyalty to my former company and my contemporaries. Yet, I would remind myself often ‘a shark can only grow as big as its tank.’ If I am to grow and really advance, I need to move on, to move up.
Looking back, with the strong support of my former management, moving to ARCADIS was the right decision. My former supervisor told me often, no matter what I do in life to ‘never stop running.’ And I haven’t and I don’t intend to stop anytime soon, literally and figuratively.
The opportunities to grow, to learn, to move forward beyond my norm at ARCADIS has been endless. I have been afforded a new beginning. A day to start. A day, like no other. And although my physical location may not have changed, I have moved and I will continue to move.
A body in motion stays in motion. A body in rest stays in rest. Never stop running.
Vanessa