Wednesday 23 May 2012

So life makes hypocrites of us all

It's been a crazy few weeks. Heck, it's been a crazy few months. In the first five months of this year I've gone to two life-altering workshops, two holidays (one to South Korea!), been through several interviews and quit my job. So it should really be no surprise that any thoughts of blogging were cursory and far-between. I have just over a week left before I pack up my life and head off to the other side of the country to start a new job.


I was on holiday in Cape Town only three months ago with my boyfriend. Before then, I'd been to Cape Town for "Maths camp", as I fondly call it, in the middle of winter and I hated the weather. In fact, I was determined never to live there. While on holiday in February, with perfect summer weather, stunning scenery, delicious food, a wide variety of activities and excitement, I admitted to myself that it might not be so bad to live there after all... one day. It turns out "one day" is a lot closer than I originally thought, going from "never" to "next week". So life makes hypocrites of us all.


But I should rewind my story a little, how did I end up making such a move? I found myself wandering listlessly down the path of life, when suddenly, quite unexpectedly, I was thrust into a situation where I had to make a drastic decision. I was presented with a job opportunity, and had another in the pipeline. In the past I'd seen job opportunities and let them go by, content in carrying on subsisting on my routine in the comfort zone. Abruptly, the path I'd been walking ended in a T-junction. One of the paths branching off required only a minimal amount of change, and was the safer option - taking a job in the city where I already lived. The other path was very risky but also had potential for great reward - moving to the other side of the country to a city I'd only rarely visited to work for a fantastic company. I'd always seen myself as a "safe" player, ever cautious, rational and definitely a person who over-analyses instead of under-analysing any situation. So it was rather a shock to my system when I made the choice to move to Cape Town, leaving my whole life behind. I had only a few hours to make the choice, without knowing whether my boyfriend would be able to move with me, though he promised he'd support any decision I made.


With a little bit of prayer, late night interview coaching and mass dispersion of my boyfriend's curriculum vitae, he managed to find a job at a great company for more pay in less than a week. And this in a city that everyone assured us is great for holiday, but difficult to find work in and pays less than the South African GDP hub of Gauteng. It just goes to show how people remain stuck in their respective ruts while listening to the general opinion.


All that separates retrospect and regret is a decision. It's easy now to look back on life and realise I'd let so many opportunities go by without even giving them a second thought. It takes a great change in the way my mind processed things to allow myself to consider these opportunities. I'd not been looking for them, and I might easily have missed them.


It's funny how quickly things can change, and even funnier how the word "never" applied to something only seems to fast track that very thing into occurring.

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