a fulfilling life

I am quite a deep thinker…I can be off on a thought and completely oblivious to the world around me. Since the New Year I have been giving a lot of thought to what makes a fulfilling life. This is different for everyone so I guess I should correct myself and say I have been thinking what is a fulfilling life for me.

Of course I think there are many things that make my life special with one of the main reasons being my amazing family but that is a given so I want to talk about something else and one of the main aspects of my life that helps define happiness and contentment to me:  a strong social circle, meaning really having a group of people in my life that I feel I belong with that live in the same city as me.

I think my strong desire for this comes from the fact that I have lived in 5 different cities (and a couple of countries) in the past 4 years….Chicago, Italy, Florida, NYC and Amsterdam. For a couple of years there I had no desire to settle down and I couldn’t commit to a place for more than 3-6 months. It was a stage of my life and one that I am grateful for. In these past four years I have been a pharmaceutical sales rep, English teach to Italian children, a waitress and for the past 2 years I have been working in account management in the Fashion Retail industry. This was my path, I knew I was reaching and striving for something bigger than what I knew and I also had come to realize I am a late bloomer to an extent and that I find my way just a bit after everyone else.

I used to not be able to comprehend how I had some childhood friends who never left the town they grew up in. How can this be?! Didn’t they have to desire to travel the world? Experience something bigger than what they knew? To be challenged in ways they never imagined by the different people and cultures they would meet along the way? To seek a career which in turn would give them independence…both personally and financially and the ability to be free? Maybe some did but just didn’t know the way to make this happen but what I think it is more than that is they loved the comfort of the familiarity and being surrounded by their loved ones. I sometimes envy these people.

After living in multiple countries and having to make new friends in each new city I realize what an absolute treasure it is to be able to live near the people who mean the world to you…friends and family. I am talking about people you absolutely love spending time with for example I am talking about my best girlfriends (you know who you are). Friends that have been there with me through it all and I have my best memories with. But with my desire to see the world and continue to experience the unknown sometimes comes the loneliness of missing the dearest friends in your life who for me are scattered throughout NOLA, MEMPHIS, NYC, MILWAUKEE and so forth.

So over the past couple months when I have been thinking about if I want to stay in AMS or move back to NYC I have given a lot of thought to what I want in my life and then asking myself if I currently have that in my life? I know I have great girlfriends in NYC but do I also have great friends in AMS? Friends that care about me? Friends that I can just sit down at a table with and gossip, tell my deep thoughts or just have a laugh with? Friends that will support me, be there for me? Have fun with me? Travel with me? Call me up for drinks and dinners? Friends that I can also be all these things to in return? And you know what my answer was after I thought about it? Absolutely. I have people :-)

Once I allowed myself to realize this it was like the cloud moved away from above me. I was able to be jolly again and just basically realized how sometimes the simplicities of life are what make life the best. (My sister has been telling me this for years and she is right)

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