obsessing about the new

I am going through another wave of obsessing about the new. For those who don't know me well, this is a period where I start wanting a new job, or a new house or a new car or a new career goal. Every few years I go through this. Sometimes it leads to a new house or a new job or a new car. I really can't do any of those things right now, and I know it.

I want to stay at my current job, so that we can pay for college for our son. I want to stay in the house I am in because really, I love it, and the neighborhood it's in. I would love a new car, but I really don't need a car payment.

At the same time, while I KNOW all this to be true, I am obsessively looking at ads for mountain cabins, visiting car websites and reading reviews, looking at want ads, and position vacancies. Because knowing I can't or more truthfully, shouldn't, doesn't mean that I want to shake things up any less. In fact, it makes it worse.

It really isn't about "new" and it isn't about dissatisfaction. It's about choices making other choices unavailable. It's about that innate thing I have that makes me push back when pushed. That makes me say NO, even when I want to say YES, just because I am being pushed to say YES. It's a universal "you're not the boss of me". You can't make me, even if it's "you can't make me" do what I want to do. Senseless, but there it is.

Just because you understand what makes you do what you do, just because you recognize your own patterns, or can see your own flaws, doesn't mean you can change them.