Moving to a new community is a strange experience in many ways. Aside from having to navigate a new landscape and find a new hairdresser and locate the best burger in town you have to make friends - some days that burger may feel like your best friend but you need people too.
What I have discovered is that you can be whoever you want to be when you are settling into a new community. You have no past, no one knew you as a kid or a teenager. To these new people you never were a dorky 14 year old, you arrived in their world a fully functional adult...its a beautiful thing.
This week I have been particularly busy at Dude's school. I am helping with props and set design for their winter concert. I have met all sorts of teachers and EAs. As we have been chatting this week the customary questions about who I am, what I do for a living and what my interests are have been asked. Maybe its just me and my occasional bizarre sense of humour but more than once in the past week or so I have fought the urge to make up stuff about myself.
"You want to know about me? Oh well, I'm a professional juggler, a former private investigator and before the octopus attack I was a marine biologist. I have climbed Mount Kilimanjaro eight times, train circus sharks in my spare time and my father is Barry Gibb."
Now before you freak out, Mom, I didn't say any of that...I could have, but I didn't.
The point is I have found that moving to a new town, meeting a whole new group of people oddly liberating. I have let go of some of my baggage and insecurities and am trying to be the person I have always wanted to be. Its a fresh start, a clean slate and in some ways, a do-over. And as free as I feel now this experience has also reminded me that it shouldn't take a total life upheaval to change, to become something different, something more. We should allow ourselves, and others, to continue to grow and change.
Don't stay the same if you are unhappy. Be the person who you have always dreamed of being...and be gracious enough to accept the changes in the people around you, too.
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