Might as well face it... I'm addicted to change

I bought Tristan Prettyman’s new album, ‘Cedar and Gold’ last week.  It’s hauntingly beautiful and knowing; much more mature and heady than her previous work, which I largely put down to the fact that it’s a break-up album.  And as I listened to it, drinking in all the raw emotion, it dawned on me that some of my favourite things to listen to are indeed break-up albums (Bon Iver’s ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ and Noah and the Whale’s ‘First Day of Spring’ are two classics that immediately spring to mind).

Which is when it hit me… people effecting major life changes is something of an obsession with me.  Not just in listening fodder, but in books, newspaper articles, bus queues; people’s life stories fascinate me if they contain something about a sea change.  I remember quotes people I’ve never met have made about moving house, getting married, getting divorced, having near-death experiences and trekking the Andes, more than I remember important things people close to me have said.   I watch closely to see how people cope; what happens to them before, during and after these seismic life shifts of theirs.  Perhaps it was only a matter of time, regardless of what I was doing in my life, before I effected a seismic life shift of my own.

And now, after a year of desperately trying to get back on my feet in a stable job and a stable home, (both of which I’ve sort-of managed) I find myself wanting to start another one.  Recently I was out for dinner with two friends who are the same age as me.  The conversation turned, as I’m assuming it often does between as-yet-childless women in their thirties, to whether or not we would have children (for the record, me and one other friend said we definitely wouldn't, while the other ummed and ahhed a bit). 

I said I wanted to make some big changes to my life very soon, and that having a child would limit this (though some would say that’s a supreme irony since having a child probably is the hugest life change a person can make!) - due to the fact that once you’re a parent it’s not your own sea changes that matter anymore, but your child’s.  Call that a selfish perspective if you like, but I like to think of it more as self-awareness.  Cheers.  Anyway, one of my friends stared at me over her glass of sauvignon blanc and said “For God’s sake, hasn’t your life changed enough over the past year?!”  The comment shocked me a bit; not only because she was right but because I’d actually forgotten that my life now is utterly, completely different to what it was this time last year, and even more so from that of the year before last.

I'm getting ever-closer to the mechanics of change by the fact that I even work for a change management consultancy these days, although change in business isn’t a subject I’m so passionate about.  This is mainly because change in business never amounts to very much more than a middle-aged man in a suit telling us all to incorporate more thinking/creativity time into our daily routines (for numerous examples just have a look at the astronomical pile of business change manuals in most bookshops and libraries up and down the country… go on, pick one up and have a look at the author’s picture inside or on the back of the jacket.  Rarely will you feel inspired to do anything different other than roll your eyes and head for the nearest alcohol-selling emporium). 

But back to me and my life… I know a change will be coming again soon.  I’m just buggered if I know what it’ll end up being.