Does anyone else need frequent life changes?

[ChangeNeedChange]

I'll start by acknowledging that I'm pretty sure this is a product of a very unsettled childhood. I always need a considerable change - moving house, country, job etc. To feel satisfied with life. I'm in a situation currently where none of those things is really possible, and am wondering if it might be better to try and break this cycle. Or, to find an alternative. But what? I really want to move, but I really shouldn't.

I've tried searching this on the internet, but all articles relate to the opposite problem, and advise how to deal with large changes. I actively seek them out. Any idea how I can resolve this?

You may be right Oblomov

I am like this. I moved around constantly as a child and for most of my adult life. I get bored very easily. I just don't know how to live in one place for more than four or five years. It's a real problem.

I'm like this. Have lived in multiple countries and lived back in my home country for almost 2 years now. Especially with covid, I'm really feeling it!

Looking at changing jobs atm having been at this one for over 18 months. A record for me starting to think I might just need to lean into it.

I had counselling at the start of the year and this came up, I couldn’t talk about it initially as it made me feel deeply uncomfortable.
For me, the big changes are to do with not wanting to feel trapped and also fear of failure, I need to keep striving towards the next thing to feel alive/ok, the one time in my life I relaxed and thought I had everything I could want preceded the most traumatic time of my life, ever since I have to keep moving/striving to feel safe.
So I agree with PP it might be worth trying to get to the bottom of why you feel like this.

I quite like changes, just because I think life is short and it's very easy to live on auto pilot when everything stays the same.

Could you get a dog? :o

I’m naturally a maker, builder and do-er but all sorts of issues have got in my way so I understand frustration! I like to have purpose but not purely for the sake of it so ideally I’d find my perfect house and never move but do small holding and all sorts of rural crafts etc.

One of my great loves is gardening and allotmenting. it’s wonderful! Creativity, nature and beauty and life growing right before your eyes.

Seeing the seasons change and having permanence yet something always changing and the whole gradually evolving. I find it incredibly grounding to use a cliched word and I feel more deeply alive when I can do it. (Not at the moment 😢)

You have the challenge to grow different vegetables or flowers so beauty and essential useful purpose combined. It’s amazing to eat what you have grown.

Nurturing seedlings is incredibly therapeutic and exciting I find 😊

Can garden for wildlife etc. Make as much of it or as little as you want for example to re-design a bed for the coming season or just tweak plant here and there, plan crop rotation and companion planting etc, or just try a new variety of radish!

Maybe something to try if you don’t garden already? As a way to bond with your home.. and of course if you love it and it meant you had to do one more move for the best garden you can get then that might be ok 😉

Ah just read that you rent OP and I know that not all LLs will allow gardening sadly. But allotmenting can be fantastic. And usually you can keep the plot if you move but stay local or sometimes even keep if you move out of the catchment so it’s good for renters.

I had a dully stable childhood, but left to myself, I’d probably move countries every couple of years — nothing makes me happier than a new landscape, a new language, new travel possibilities, new friends etc.

And in fact I did that for quite a while, and moved around the world a lot, with and without DH, and while I’ve slowed it down a bit since DS started school, he’s still lived in three countries by the age of eight, and we had five addresses between Christmas 2019 and Christmas 2020, though we’ll stay where we are for now, and have just bought a giant Victorian wreck. I don’t know what the answer is in your case, OP, but I value this about myself. It’s not pathological, and I’m not running away from anything, I just like making changes. It’s helped me achieve things I value.

I’m like this. I get bored when life is predictable and mundane.

When I was 18, I moved to London and worked full time whilst at university full time, whilst having an incredible social life. My life was so spontaneous and fun, and it really gave me motivation and sort of charged my mood/energy up. That sort of busy city life suited me perfectly and I excelled in all areas. With that job, and my graduate job, I found myself regularly getting promoted as I kept naturally putting myself out there.

Whereas living in a quiet area, with a boring job etc doesn’t feel right for me. I sort of lose my identity?

I really love gardening and the seasons in a garden really do help. Unfortunately I have no garden and live is the tropics, so no seasons.
What I really want to do at the moment is return to UK, buy a big doer-upper with garden and focus on that for a couple of years. But it probably isn't wise. I have a good job here, kids are happy.

I think we learn patterns from our childhood for sure. How to live.

My parents have been in the same house since 1971. DH dad as well, decades.

I can understand the desire for change but the effort etc and that it's our home means realistically we won't. In the end we follow the pattern.

I have friends and when I was young, school friends who moved every 3 years or so. Move, get it nice, get settled, then itchy feet and move. Just a different way, a different pattern.

And if course boredom.

In the end there's nothing wrong with being who you are and being happy even if you feel it's 'not right'.

Moving jobs seems fine if you keep getting more money etc

I like going out to keep enjoying life (covid has fucked me!). Gigs clubs meeting people etc.

Sounds like you need a project. How are your finances? You could do property renovation if you have the cash? That might satisfy you?

Or failing that some other project with a start, make good, sell, onto the next one..

@NiceGerbil this doesn't really apply me to as I lived in the same home for my entire childhood and my parents are in the same hometown. I have no other relatives who have moved around as I have

Don't know where it comes from! My dad calls me 'a restless soul' !

Yes I'm sure it doesn't always hold true!

Any advice for OP? I'm the wrong personality type to help but have done my best!

@ChangeNeedChange

I really love gardening and the seasons in a garden really do help. Unfortunately I have no garden and live is the tropics, so no seasons. What I really want to do at the moment is return to UK, buy a big doer-upper with garden and focus on that for a couple of years. But it probably isn't wise. I have a good job here, kids are happy.

I am without a garden too at the moment and it HURTS!

If it were possible to get a good job with relative security etc then I think maybe your plan isn’t so bad and it’s what you really want. But maybe just plan to stay rather than sell straightaway? It might turn out to be the time to create something permanent for yourself.

Maybe there is fear of losing something permanent so you move on before you become too attached? To stay in control, one step ahead or something like that.

Yes, I used to. I didn't really question it at the time. My attitude was kind of why not take this job on the other side of the world, then another in a completely different place again, then this group of people you've just met say go to this remote spot over here, then when you're there someone else is setting up a new business and it's nice and ...

Sort of a "oh yah I'm a traveller" mentality I guess but not consciously and always with jobs and goals but nothing focused or linear. It didn't always work and sometimes I'd be unsuited to what I was up to but I'd just sack it off and go on to the next flat/job/country.

I don't really know why I was like that but it probably had to do with moving far from the place I was born and hating the town I ended up doing most of my growing up in. I dunno but I always felt rootless.

I've calmed the fuck down a lot since having kids just because you have to but actually although I haven't thought about it like a pp said previously our lives were always packed with activities and projects etc right up to lockdown.

What made a big difference apart from the kids (so, practical considerations I guess, plus it was nice, the process of putting down roots for them and giving them a positive experience of a hometown) was finding a job I love doing. I mean I completely believe in the work I do. I fell into it same as I did all the others but this one matters and I'm good at it.

So I guess that's a long winded way of saying I found things that I cared about - a worthwhile job that uses my specific skillset, building a feeling of rootedness for my kids. And that calmed me down.

I'm not done yet. I mean, I'm not going to live forever where I am. I'm hoping to progress yet more with this employer. And I'm learning a language, writing a book, still heavily involved in the local scene for my hobby. But I'm not looking for the next thing any more.

It takes all sorts though. I think accepting who you are etc is really important.

Life/society really tries to shove us into such narrow ideas about what is 'normal'.

If everyone was happy to stay put we'd have had no explorers.

If no one stayed put we'd have no civilisations.

Managing your own personality to avoid uprooting kids to new schools every couple of years is doable. But it's s delay.

Denying what you need to get you going does not lead to a happy life. Well unless it's heroin or something..

I'm like this to an extent, although I have 'settled' a bit more recently (have been in the same job for 8 whole years now and in the same relationship for 10, both of those are significant records for me!)

I do thrive on change and challenge though, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I am coming to end of my patience-rope with my job now (though not, thankfully, my relationship!) and so I'm putting plans in place to move onto a new chapter career-wise. We're also moving house and relocating. which is incredibly exciting and I'm looking forward to actually putting down some roots there. But ten years ago I was getting itchy feet, moving house and changing jobs every couple of years out of boredom and a need to be challenged, seek new experiences etc.

I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with what you feel. Some people just need to shake things up more often than others, and I think managing change teaches flexibility, organisation and resilience.

It is harder when you have kids though, especially when they're settled in school. I agree with the suggestions of changing something in your own life that won't necessarily impact much on your kids at this stage.

This is really interesting, I am like this though have managed to temper it over the years by making the plans but without actually doing it. Having DS helped as we are in a very good school system (top 10 in the UK at the time) so moving was out of the question.

I'm unsure if it's in some way hormonal as well, as I go through monthly phases of utter recklessness that I have almost no control over. Again I have tempered these as I've got older, but it has been a regular and depressing struggle.