I made it!

[Disclaimer: this post is going to be quite self-celebratory because I am not only very happy but also extremely proud of what I’ve just done.]

I made it! 

Yesterday I made it to my new (albeit temporary) home in Colorado and now I’m sipping tea in the living-room watching thick, soft snow fall outside the windows. So weather-wise, I made it just in time — one of the benefits of being a paranoid planner, I guess! 

I’m happy because I love this place and it feels like a homecoming, since I spent one of the most beautiful summers of my life here last July 2021. But I’m also happy because I truly needed this change. Maybe the stifling aspects of my life until last week weren’t due only, or mainly, to the location, but to my own situation, to the fact that I felt stuck in my own professional as well as personal life? Or simply due to my own nature, to my character, to the fact that every few years I need a big change? In some ways maybe I was getting too comfortable in my situation in California, and comfortable in ways that weren’t fully satisfying to me and that lacked growth in some important aspects of my life, and that’s why I felt stifled? 

Maybe I just needed to push my comfort zone further, in a great, momentous spurt again, as I need to do now and then? 

Over the years, I’ve realized that I have a very big and elastic comfort zone that I like and even need to push quite often. And I’ve done it again. I’ve just driven myself and most of my belongings across several States, over 1,300 miles, through desert and mountains in wintertime, on my own, to embrace change and start a new phase of my life, after having packed up years of my life in boxes and moved out of a place where I spent the past five years. 

This is HUGE. 

Admittedly, I got help from friends both for some practical errands and for advice or emotional support — proving, once again, how blessed I am with friendships. 

But then, at the end of the day, getting my belongings and my butt into my car and driving myself all the way here to embrace this new phase of my life, was something I had to do all by myself. And I did. Just like I did six years ago, when I packed my bags and moved from Europe to California because I felt stifled and unhappy there and needed to pursue my own dreams, or to push my comfort zone and grow. 

In this moment, I’m mostly proud of the practical issues I overcame, the aspects of really practical growth in this journey. Simply the fact of driving alone for so many miles in wintertime: I had never done it before. 

When I moved to start my post-doc, it was also wintertime and in some ways a similar trip by car in wintertime crossing mountains, but so many aspects made it easier (from the practical viewpoint): I wasn’t alone, since I was moving with my ex-partner, so we could take turns driving, navigating, and doing anything else; we were traveling in his car, so he was familiar with and had taken care of all the practical aspects such as winter tires, chains, non-freeze windshield fluid, etc.; we were crossing the Alps, with only one day of traveling and no stretches of being “in the middle of nowhere”. And this was over a decade ago and I haven’t been in real wintertime mountain weather for over six years now — and never on my own. So when the snowstorm started shortly outside of St. George, UT on my third day of travel, I panicked. But I kept a level head and dealt with it. The worst part really was the windshield fluid: when I took my car to the mechanics before leaving California, I told them specifically about my upcoming trip through the mountains in below-freezing temperatures, asking them to make sure they added the correct, “real” type of non-freezing windshield fluid. They assured me they had, and I trusted them. I guess I should have double-checked in some way: as soon as the temperature went below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, my windshield fluid froze, making my windshield wipers not only useless but also hazardous — and of course, I found this out in the middle of a snow storm in the mountains in Utah. 

I’ve ridden my motorcycle in conditions of poor visibility and I drove my car through a storm last summer, with rain so thick that visibility was nil and I had to stop for a while. So I know how scary it is to drive when you can’t see where you’re going, and I know that you’ve just got to stop as soon and as safely as possible, and resume traveling after you’ve regained visibility. I’ve done it before. But never in a snowstorm in the mountains on my own. So I guess it was the novelty of the experience that scared me: the fear came mainly from the situation being unfamiliar. But I’m really proud for not letting the panic take over. I literally talked to myself, admitting out loud that I was scared, and then, once that was said and out of the way, dealing with the practical aspects of the situation. I solved the problem and drove myself safely through the mountains and snow for the next day and a half. And in doing this, I also learned more about my car: for the first time, I opened the hood and inspected things on my own (I had done it before but always with persons who were experts and who therefore took charge)! 

This might all sound silly or “normal”, but for me it’s a big deal. I didn’t grow up around cars and this is literally the first car I’ve ever owned (I got it in summer of 2020) and only driven it in mild or warm/hot conditions. Give me a sailboat and put me in a storm: I know exactly what to do and won’t panic at all. Road trips and maintenance on a motorcycle are also much more familiar and manageable to me now (since 2018). But cars in real winter weather on a long road trip across mountains, on my own, is definitely pushing my comfort zone — or, at least, it was until the other day! 

What really helps me in these situations to keep a level head is thinking of the worst-case scenario and what I would do if that happened: once I visualize and almost “make peace with” the worst-case scenario, then I can calmly focus on whatever is happening in the moment, no matter how bad it is, and solve it as rationally as possible. And one of the things I like about this trouble-shooting and problem-solving in a real, practical scenario is that it can remind us (or, at least, me) of the skills and resources and knowledge that we really have and often forget. 

Dealing with new situations, with the unforeseen or unfamiliar, is a great way to push our comfort zone and something I really enjoy because it feels empowering and brings me a sense of growth. 

As my artist-friend said to me last week about some emotions I was sharing with them, “Isn’t it wonderful that at forty you can still experience such new feelings?” — Now I can add, “Isn’t it wonderful that at forty I can still learn so much, with so much enthusiasm, and that there’s still so much out there for me to experience?”!