I’ve had a weird bout of restlessness and dissatisfaction lately, where I find myself feeling like I need to change something. I’ve thought about moving someplace else entirely, looked at possible jobs, pondered going in different directions with some things in my life.

It only occurred to me yesterday what’s going on: my army brat background is acting up again. I grew up moving every three or so years. Every few years, everything got uprooted — new home in an entirely new place, new school, new friends, new church, new activities. It continued to some extent even after my dad retired because although we settled in one place, I finished high school four years later and moved to a different city for college, then moved to yet another city when I finished college. From birth to about the age of 22, my life was totally changed every one to four years. I was used to constant renewal.

I’ve had a tendency to uproot my life every few years since then. Before I bought my house, I changed apartments every 2-3 years. I stayed in my first job nearly five years, but it was about three years per job after that. I’ve lasted longer in churches, but have generally found myself drifting from one to another every 5 years or so. I even seem to do a bit of a friend turnover every few years, gravitating from one group of people to another.

But now I’ve lived in the same house for 20 years. I’ve had the same “job” of working for myself for 16 years. I’ve been going to the same church for about 12 years. I’ve been hanging out with the same group of people for about that long. No wonder I’m feeling restless. The problem is that I don’t necessarily want to change these things. I would like a different house, but that’s a complicated process that will require a lot of work and saving more money. I really don’t want a different job. I like my church and the community I have there. I like my friends. How can I give myself that sense of renewal and change without actually changing things?

My mom deals with the itch to move by rearranging furniture. My house is small enough that there aren’t many functional options for rearranging furniture (though I did swap my bedroom and my office after a few years in this house, which kind of worked like a move). I don’t really want to redecorate entirely if I’m going to possibly be moving within a couple of years, but I think maybe doing the big decluttering project I have planned may feel like a move. I’ve been working on mostly the same series for a while, so maybe writing something entirely new might help. Maybe I could travel more, and that would give me the sense of relocating. I could start a new activity that would bring me around new people, letting me make new friends without losing the old ones.

Just identifying the feeling and its source helps. Now I realize that I’m not unhappy. I just have that itch to change something. I need some renewal.