For somebody that constantly brings up how much I hate change, I’m constantly changing different aspects of my life (usually all at once) and writing about it here. Since writing is the best way I know how to get things off of my mind and deal with my stress from these changes, here’s yet another post about my realizations of my choices in life changes.
As many of you know, I’ve started a new job this week and I knew for about a month that I was leaving my prior job, but it didn’t really hit me until I was leaving the city I had grown up in and spent 27 years of my life in after my last day of work. I got some drinks with coworkers, who are really close friends at this point, after my last day and we talked about my new position and how bittersweet it was that I was leaving but the general message was that they would miss me and wished me luck. My boyfriend and I started the drive back to our place in Riverview and I stared out of the passenger window at all of the landmarks in my hometown and started realizing something. When I was in high school I remember saying to myself that I would never leave Lakeland. Most of my close family live there, that’s where I went to school and where all of my friends were, and even the friends I made in college lived in Lakeland. The crazy thing I started to realize was how my circle of where I went in life started to expand the older I got.
Until I graduated high school, my travel radius was about 10 miles, if that. I think the furthest I had traveled was from my mom’s house to my dad’s house. I didn’t venture far past the interstate overpass and certainly never went to the other side of town. Then I started college and that expanded my bubble to downtown Lakeland and maybe a little bit past that. I made some great friends while there, some of which I’m still best friends with now, and we would frequent the restaurants and some bars downtown such as Palace Pizza and Molly McHugh’s Irish Pub. I would rarely travel to the other side of town to some of my friends parent’s houses because that was completely out of my comfort zone and I had no idea where anything was. Plus, it was about a 30-minute drive back home to my mom’s house.
Then a crazy thing happened that really made me travel far- I got a job at Disney! That’s over 65 miles away from my hometown! Oddly enough, I remember when I first got my car and I didn’t want to travel on I-4 to the Strawberry Festival so I only took back roads. Obviously, taking I-4 would be the fastest way to get to Disney and I had to overcome my fear of driving long distances on the interstate, the worst one in the country. This clearly went well and I even drove around Orlando after work on occasion for dinner and drinks with coworkers there. I also started going to school in St. Petersburg at the same time while still living in Lakeland, so I apparently liked driving long distances at that point in my life.
Then I decided it was time to get an “adult” job with a career path, 401k, and health benefits of my own and was back in Lakeland. I did end up moving out of my mom’s house and into a house ironically on the complete opposite side of town before I got an apartment of my own but even the apartment was in a part of Lakeland that I had grown up in and knew everything about the area. I explored some restaurants downtown that I had never been to, but it was all in Lakeland. All things that I was familiar with and people I knew. I couldn’t step foot into Walmart or Publix without seeing someone from high school.
Finally one of my best friends bought a house in Riverview and that was the start of something I could have never seen coming. Fast forward to today, and now I’m renting a room in his house and work at a job less than 5 miles away. If you had asked high school me if I would ever move out of Lakeland, I would have laughed and said definitely not but yet here we are.
I love my hometown and the people there. I love how Munn Park lights up every Christmas. I’m grateful that I had the chance to go to Florida Southern College and meet some of the best people that turned into amazing friends that truly shaped my life up to this point. I’ll never forget walking to Mr. Fish around the corner from the school or getting together for Super Smash parties. I’ll remember those crazy days in retail at Hallmark at the mall and how I gained my best friend in the world Olivia from that job and now she has a baby! I’ll always have the memories from my childhood of visiting the library, the museum, feeding the ducks around the lake. While my dream of having my kids go to the same high school as me probably isn’t that realistic anymore, I’ll still appreciate the Friday night football games painting my face with my friends and cheering on our team (Go Braves!)
This whole post really is just to share my awe in how far I’ve come from that young, naive girl who thought she’d stay in the same spot forever to this person who doesn’t get as anxious when the idea of change comes up. High school me would not recognize 27-year old me, and I think that’s the biggest lesson. You don’t realize how much you change in a certain amount of time without stopping to reflect on it.
Love you all. See you in the next post.
This Crazy Thing Called Life 