{"id":1960,"date":"2011-01-18T20:49:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T02:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/01\/18\/it-takes-guts-to-get-out-of-the-ruts\/"},"modified":"2022-07-05T14:40:21","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T12:40:21","slug":"it-takes-guts-to-get-out-of-the-ruts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/01\/18\/it-takes-guts-to-get-out-of-the-ruts\/","title":{"rendered":"IT TAKES GUTS TO GET OUT OF THE RUTS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I forgot to make note of my moved-to-Sweden anniversary until I was reminded by <a href=\"http:\/\/blue_eyed_girl.livejournal.com\/\" class=\"lj-user\">blue_eyed_girl<\/a>&#8216;s post today. I moved here on January 11th, 1997. Anders has already arrived a week earlier and the day before I got here, his sister had a baby boy, who celebrated his fourteenth birthday last week. Crazy how time flies.<\/p>\n<p>With the 14 years in Sweden and the 6 years I lived overseas as a child, I&#8217;ve now spent 20 years of my life overseas. I figured out in the car on the way back from the birthday dinner for Henrik that in another six years, I will have spent HALF my life overseas. So when I&#8217;m&#8230;29, we&#8217;ll have a big party, okay? haha!<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, in the course of some conversation whose repartee (no doubt witty) I can&#8217;t recall, Martin retorted to something I asked him, with the comment, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know, I don&#8217;t speak OLD.&#8221; which cracked me up. Of course he doesn&#8217;t! Who does? ME, that&#8217;s who. Some days I really feel my age, which to be honest, isn&#8217;t all that advanced on the one hand, but on the other hand, wasn&#8217;t I HIS age just a moment ago? Wasn&#8217;t I just meeting Becky in Mr Davis&#8217; English class and drawing comics on reams of lined notebook paper? Conversely, didn&#8217;t I just get here? How can it feel like ages have passed and no time at all in the same moment?<\/p>\n<p>All the people I&#8217;ve been are still inside me, somewhere: the child, the military brat, the teenager, the college student. The young woman, the neophyte career girl, the single gal, the fiancee, the newlywed, the new mom. They&#8217;re not lost, exactly&#8230;not GONE, but it takes longer to summon them these days and replay some of the things I once thought and felt. It takes more effort to leap high enough to see out of this life-rut I&#8217;ve been slowly eroding downwards into. I think I&#8217;m overdue for a shake-up, though writing that feels like extending a hand to fate and daring it grab hold and yank. <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t mean shake-up in a bad way, just that I think it&#8217;s time to do some housecleaning&#8230;in my brain, in my life, in my attitudes and most especially, in my comfort zone. <i>Mmmm<\/i> comfort zone!<\/p>\n<p>The thing is, I LIKE my life. I don&#8217;t want it to CHANGE, exactly, just to <b>add<\/b> something to it. I&#8217;m not really interested in looking for a new job. Maybe I should take a class. Maybe I should travel somewhere I&#8217;ve never been. I don&#8217;t think rearranging the living room takes things far enough, though there are things I WON&#8217;T do for a shake-up. <\/p>\n<p><b>Things I won&#8217;t do for a shake-up:<\/b> have an affair, move house, commit a crime, have a baby, quit blogging (<i>*smile*<\/i>).<\/p>\n<p>What would you do? What&#8217;s outside that rut of yours?<\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p><b>Smutty Rutty Silly Putty Birthday Wishes to <a href=\"http:\/\/somebodystrange.livejournal.com\/\" class=\"lj-user\">somebodystrange<\/a>!<\/b> <font size=\"-3\">(hahaha! I don&#8217;t know, it just sounded funny!)<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I forgot to make note of my moved-to-Sweden anniversary until I was reminded by blue_eyed_girl&#8216;s post today. I moved here on January 11th, 1997. Anders has already arrived a week earlier and the day before I got here, his sister had a baby boy, who celebrated his fourteenth birthday last week. Crazy how time flies. With the 14 years in Sweden and the 6 years I lived overseas as a child, I&#8217;ve now spent 20 years of my life overseas. I figured out in the car on the way back from the birthday dinner for Henrik that in another six&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,4],"class_list":["post-1960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-americanabroad","tag-beinglizardek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4425,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960\/revisions\/4425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}