Film & Kay

Liminal spaces are quite familiar to me, yet each carries a slightly different flavor. For years, questions hung in the air: Is this where I should be? Where would I go next? How long do I stay? There was always something to rub against. Something else out there, or a place that felt like home I longed to return to.

Now my record for staying in one place with one employer is ongoing: four years, seven months, and fourteen days as of today and my relationship with the liminal has morphed. Three residences, and I’ve currently lived alone in this cabin longer than anywhere else in my adult life: three years, one month, and eighteen days. And I will stay. Stability has a gloriousness to it.

The light in the afternoon dancing through the blinds onto a vintage oil painting. The same low spots in the floor of my 100+ year old settling home. The lovely quiet and the buzz of birds at the feeder. It is a little paradise. The biggest thing, though, is that I actually like my work. I find purpose in it, day to day.

Yet that little whisper has persisted even as I’ve shifted outwardly. What to do with it?

Is it a old habit? A pattern? A quiet knowing? Or a creature I’ll live with for the rest of my life, no matter where I go, the voice of dissatisfaction, or simply the signal that you’ve found all you can find here? Or a false sense of controlled chaos helping ease external uncertainty?

I carry the sense that I am always standing at a fork, debating transition. Sometimes I moved recklessly. Most of the time I liked to sketch out a few stops with a loose destination in mind. Now I sit and wait more often, letting things move rather than hurling myself at the world.

Maybe that’s the lesson.

Instead of being swept up in the grandeur of the next town, the outside to change in the inside, or the fleeing itself… it is watching those impulses. Allowing them to rise and fall. Restrategizing for peace rather than squirming in discomfort. The older I get, the more I lean into clichés. The world will happen and I will participate, but I don’t need to force change as bluntly as I once did. Truth be told, that forcing took a massive toll on my health. It created an environment of consistently searching for greener pastures. I don’t regret it. I needed that force to land me here, a green pasture, but maybe there is a path that incorporates both ways.