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Original Article here. Reposting as affirmation. I just did this and have done it many times. The sentiment in this read captures it completely for me. I’ve never felt so alive as when I’ve begun again, started over, challenged myself to try something that scared me.

Time to leave now, get out of this room, go somewhere, anywhere, sharpen this feeling of happiness and freedom, stretch your limbs, fill your eyes, be awake, wider awake, vividly awake in every sense and every pore. – Stefan Zweig

Turn around, look at your life and decide right now if this moment, this place makes your pulse race and your heart bend. If there’s not a fluttering feeling in the deepest part of your soul, questioning and absorbing everything around you, get out right now.

If you feel comfortable, content and unchallenged… stand up and walk away. Make plans or don’t make plans, but whatever you do, leave this place and find somewhere new.

There’s a reason the word “leaving” sounds so nice. Like saying “see you later” instead of “goodbye,” it puts you at ease. It signifies a fresh start, a departure from the old and overrun. Because leaving is just the precursor to arriving, and there’s nothing better than a fresh start.

Whether it’s a new apartment or a new city, starting over isn’t about changing your scene, but the way you’re living in it. It’s about opening your eyes again, walking to the ledge and looking up, down and across, once again comprehending the vastness of life that sits openly waiting for you.

Life has a tendency to get stale. Like your favorite food, it loses its edge after a while, that special quality that made you love it so much in the first place. We, like the places we confine ourselves to, become as dull and boring as our surroundings.

New experiences are the reason we live. They are the reason we get up every day, the reason we carry on. While we enjoy comfort, we crave experience. The point of living is not to resign yourself to one part of life, but to continually redefine yourself. It’s to baptize yourself, over and over again, in new waters and new experiences.

You have your entire life to be comfortable, to sit in your house and bask in the familiarity of it. But right now, while you’re young and uncomfortable, keep going, keep challenging yourself. Keep making yourself uncomfortable. Because it’s only when we’re uncomfortable that we are growing and learning.

To truly understand yourself, your purpose and those around you, you must keep moving. You must move at least five times; five times to open your heart and dip your toes into something new, fresh and life changing.

1. To get away from what you know

Your first move is like taking flight for the first time. Like learning to fly, you realize the only thing stopping you from the world is yourself. You don’t have wings, you have legs, airplanes and trains. You have buses, cars and ocean liners. You have the world in front of you, with nothing but open sky and limitless possibilities.

But first you must leave the nest. You must say goodbye to everything you grew up with, the small world you once considered enough. You must unlatch yourself from the comforts of the familiar and place yourself in the middle of chaos.

This first move is the hardest. It’s the moment you willingly decide to be uncomfortable, scared and alone. It’s making the decision to become a foreigner, an outsider, a refugee. It’s abandoning everything you once cherished for the idea that there’s something better out there.

2. To find new experiences

The second move you make should be one of restlessness. You should be tired of the same flavors of your now comfortable surroundings. This move is about feeling again. It’s about accepting that you can’t possibly know everything, but you are going to try.

You are going to have experiences, adventures and an unforeseen future. You don’t know who you’ll meet, what you’ll find or how you’ll get there, but you will do it. You will jump into it blindly and openly.

You will make new friends, find new flavors and reignite that passion for life that came with your first move. You will not rest until your hungry soul is placated. You will leave your old friends for new ones, your first language for another and that idea that you’re home for that invigorating feeling of homesick.

3. To chase love

To chase love is to chase happinesses. It’s to decide that you will throw yourself into the swirling, maddening and restless chase we’re all trying to enter. Because love is the ultimate destination, is it not? It’s the reason we move, every day.

It’s the reason we get up and fight through the bad. It’s the reason we keep going, trudging on, meeting person after person. It’s the last goal, the final frontier and the only thing worth moving for.

If you think you’ve found it… in a person, a city, a job, you must move for it. If your dream job awaits in Spain, you must move there. If your heart yearns for the pink beaches of Bermuda, you must go there.

If you fall in love on the dunes of the Cape with a man you barely know, you must follow him. Chasing love is not irresponsible, it’s honest. It’s admitting that there is no greater chase, nothing more important. Because if you’re not chasing love, what are you running after?

4. To escape that love

Love isn’t infinite. It can be found in a moment, a single dose or a fleeting romance. It can be a year of perfect love with someone who isn’t supposed to stay in your life. It can be in beaches that bring you peace until your heart years for something new. It can be in the first bite of pasta and over with its last.

Love isn’t defined by its length but its capacity to touch you and change you. Just because it doesn’t last doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. You must leave for love but you also must realize when that love no longer remains.

You must be strong enough to walk away from finished love to find new love. You must flee the suffocation that comes from stifled love and keep your heart open for more.

You must never settle, never give in to the idea that you can’t have another one. Because the world is full of things to throw your heart into, things to make you weep and realize (yet again) why you’re alive.

5. To begin all over again

You must resist the confines of comfort. You must defy the idea of settled. You must never resign yourself to the ordinary or the easy. You must challenge tranquility for the promise of something greater.

To live is to be born and to continually live is to be reborn, again and again. As a new person, new lover, new friend, you must willingly evolve and transform into new versions of yourself.

You must never allow the new place you’ve created to become the final place. You must consistently defy the idea of comfort for the idea that you’ll never be fully satisfied unless you’re exploring, changing and moving.

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Fact of the matter is, y’all are about due for another major announcement. I’m prolonging it.

But MK and I are moving again. Which means if you’re a lucky chosen one, you get crap. I know, it’s terrible. But on principal, we can’t just throw away food. And one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, right? So remember, friend I’m bestowing cans of tuna on, I love you. And that’s really like 100$ worth of crap we just can’t fit, but we choose to share.

I have these serious mixed emotions trying to pawn off things on people. Things I didn’t use in almost six months. I don’t want you to think you’re not good enough for filets, but we eat those. And so we ask you if you’d like some leftover pickles in a half empty jar.

I would take your scraps. I get it. The money has been spent. The buy-one-get-ten sale can be too much for anyone. So there are have leftovers. And my laptop and eyeliner are getting in the moving van before the Crystal Light.

So thanks for using our things. Or if you move, thanks for giving us your things. It’s a circle of Christmas re-giving of random room-making expendables that “GYPSIES” like MK and I come to count on!

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Nothing is more important around here than a good Halloween costume. But we always forget and are last minute and come up with nothing good. So internet buddies – I need your help! Will anyone know who I am if this is my costume?

That is the ‘sexy’ version I’d try to make, this is the where she’s from if you’re stumped:

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How many people in your life make you want to be a better person? Too often, I think, I get in a rut of behavior and don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what the future could hold, what is most important to me in life. We play and goof off and enjoy the present – which I think is totally acceptable – but we also let go of a lot in order to have that fun.

MK and I have made a ton of friends here that are bar buddies. You totally need those friends, but those friends don’t fly to visit you and make you think about your life. They will show up for the Inner2bapalooza, but they’ll get drunk and make you lose your husband. They won’t understand when that bothers you like a good friend will. But a good friend will also tell you when to get over it sometimes. We left so many of those friends behind when we left Austin, and that’s no fun.

For all that and more – hanging out with my friends, talking me through my issues, and just being such a cool person I can’t be happier we met – I totally wasn’t surprised when I had the uncontrollable out of nowhere sniffles after I put KD on the plane. She was probably ready to go – but I wasn’t ready to let her! Thank you, lady, for being so incredible!

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Right around Christmas, maybe a week before, we bought some poinsettias at Home Depot. I wanted three, but MK only let me get two, a red and a pink one. We usually get one every winter. It usually dies before Christmas. Or shortly thereafter.

But check out these guys:

The pink one is much bigger. They were doing so well in April when we moved that yes, I TOTALLY took them with us. Some of our first company that we had to explain we had a furnished place to commented “How tacky of the owner to leave old plants”, which was really funny after I let them know that, no, those were ours.

I’ve never kept anything alive so long. (Come to think of it, I’m probably totally jinxing myself). Maybe it helps our little condo is like a sauna in the morning. I don’t think you can spot it in the pictures, but these are BOTH sprouting new branches. It’s pretty funny. And exciting. I’m thinking of re-potting them in real pots. We’ll see.

Just wanted to share my excitement about the first thing I haven’t killed. Maybe it’s time to upgrade to a puppy…

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We really liked living in a house in Park City. We shipped MK’s giant stereo system, set it up in the basement, and played it as loud as we could. We parked our car as crooked as we wanted. I did laundry and let it sit until I knew I had to do it or it would get moldy. I might have walked around not all the way attired as long as the blinds were closed. Houses are fun.

Then we moved. I’m happy to be back in sunny San Diego, but part of the price for this water front view is sharing it with a hundred thousand other people. We didn’t buy the condo, we’re renting. But we totally get that to some people this is home and rules are important to help people live around all those other people. We’re rule followers, mostly.

We parked the car in the spot closest to the elevator to lift MK’s 200+ lb. amp. And got yelled at. As we were leaving said spot, maybe 2 minutes later. Do we look like spot stealers? With smiles like these? We have to get bike tags and ignore the baby crying downstairs and get funny looks when we actually use the pool area. We have to say hi to everyone even if we’re not in the mood. It’s harder than it sounds.

Of course I can’t really complain, I love it here. I just can’t understand why (for what, the fifth time?) we get drama for being the ‘seasonals’. We’re the nicest of the ‘seasonals’. We keep to ourselves and behave and don’t make big messes. We’re not going to go nuts. I mean, other than when we use the speakers.

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When you drive off into the sunset and start a big journey you experience a different sort of driving. You’re in the car for a long time. You snack, you sleep, you get crabby. Even if it’s a fun road trip you have to deal with a road full of truckers and other travelers, especially at night. We kept seeing the same cars stop, then pass us, then be at the next stop. I always forget the serious stuff, like having to stop for gas and trying to pick the least sketchy exit. The well lit gas station. And the bathrooms. Ugh.

There should be a rating system and a book of where not to stop. I for one will never be seen in an am/pm again. There are not words to describe the sheer will it takes to wipe the seat, put four or five of those protective covers down (OVER the swear words thoughtfully etched on to the seat), and then still crouch/hover on one leg to relieve yourself. Then MK’s wondering what took so long, well, I wash my hands in boiling water for 3 minutes, then having to find a way to open the door without actually touching it with anything but the bottom of my shoe.

It got to the point where I stopped drinking water. I figured I’d rather end up in a hospital with an IV than at another rest stop. At least the bathroom would be sanitary.