Good Luck Movin’ Up Cause I’m Movin’ Out

For so many years we focus on moving up – in our careers, our homes, making sure our children have it better than we did, in our communities and sometimes even in our families. We hear about keeping up with the Jones’ and work so hard to be ‘yard of the month’ that we forget what is really important. These COVID-19 months of social distancing have given us the opportunity to calibrate our lives.

I have cleaned out almost every drawer and closet in our house, garage and studio. I have completed projects around the house that were nagging at me, and I have been blessed to be able to spend time with my family. Our spending habits have changed, what we do with our time has changed, even household chores have taken on a new meaning. Movin’ up in the world doesn’t always mean comparing more to less, sometimes it means moving into the next phase of life. It means being open to different, more meaningful parts of life that had been forgotten by the hustle and bustle of ‘movin’ up’.

I had a client send me an email today about her children, graduated from college and gainfully employed. She said she felt guilty that she had spent so much time with her family lately now the she worked remotely…what? She acknowledged that she had been programmed to cram all of her attention towards her family into less than two hours a day because she worked all the time. She mentioned what a mean tall adjustment this time had been and she wasn’t used to it yet.

Whatever it is that you have done with your social distancing experience, I hope that you have evaluated your own meaning of success and have acted on that definition. Everyone has to define what movin’ up means for their lives, and that also means leaving behind the pressures, “shoulds” and comparisons our culture and media plop into our heads. To quote Billy Joel, it seems such a waste of time, if that’s what it’s all about, good luck movin’ up cause I’m movin’ out!