Moving again

Having just moved, I appreciated this post by the author Steven Johnson (via Ben Casnocha):

And then there’s the passage of time. Another old friend — my oldest, in fact — wrote an email to me after I told him the news of our move. We’ve both been in New York for two decades, and we are both watching our kids growing up at lightning speed. “Change like this slows down time,” he wrote. When you’re in your routine, frequenting the same old haunts, time seems to accelerate — was it just four years ago that our youngest son was born? But all the complexities of moving — figuring out where to live, getting there, and then navigating all the new realities of the changed environment — means that the minutes and hours that once passed as a kind of background process, the rote memory of knowing your place, suddenly are thrust into your conscious awareness. You have to figure it out, and figuring things out makes you aware of the passing days and months more acutely. You get disoriented, or at least you have to think for a while before you can be properly oriented again.

I don’t know about time – what is that, after all? But I do know what he means about routines and being forced to look at things afresh. It’s a cleansing, healthy thing to move: to chuck away all the crap you don’t need and never use; to see old friends and family, to hug them farewell, knowing you won’t see them regularly; to land in a new place where everything is alien and novel. It re-animates the things that have become mundane, because you have to think about where to shop, eat, drink, how to cross the street, etc. Of course, there are downsides as well – including a general loss of value (eg from re-buying some of that stupid stuff again). And it’s tiring. But, on balance, I’ll take the annoyances, and the expense, for the sake of the fresh perspective. Who wants to stay in the same place forever, anyway?