How to try Different Things

Go a different way to work. Throw food on the floor and laugh. Try to empathize with someone. Cook a Turducken. Just do something different. 

I told myself a few months ago that I was going to try and do something new to me every day. Maybe it would be to look at a new website or to shop at a different grocery store. 

It's amazing what you can find when you push yourself out of your little bubble.

I was too young to remember, but my mother says that I was so afraid of new things when I was a baby that she could sit me in the middle of the horrible green living room carpet on a blanket with a toy or two and go clean the entire house. When she was done she would come back and find that I hadn't moved an inch. I just sat in the middle of the room trying to figure it all out from a distance. She tells me that that example is a microcosm of my personality. I was also breach at birth before the emergency C-section. She says I wanted to "test the waters" with my feet before really committing.  

It has always been tough for me to leave familiar territory, although I've always tried to push myself out of it. Joining for Army was as far as I have ever gone from my perfect little world. Even then I was anxious to get back to my little bubble. So after my hitch I moved home where everything was warm and fuzzy and happy. It wasn't until after spending several years stagnating I knew it was time to make a change. 

But, why? It was so nice there in the bubble! I had a decent job, a little house, a nice truck, a wonderful family and lots of friends and drinking buddies. I did whatever whenever, with virtually no casualties aside from my liver and bank account. But it wasn't enough. There was no future, no security, no promise. If I didn't push myself out of that comfort zone I would die there. Likely of cirrhosis and boredom. 

And then I met my wife. She never asked me to, but I knew I had to make some changes. Out of the "comfort zone" I went. Again. This time it would be to learn a trade and get a real job outside the family business and the Army. In other words, one from which I could get fired. And it was outside of my known world. Oh No! How could I possible survive this gauntlet? Oh, the anxiety!

A few years have gone by now and I have a good job with good benefits in a good business. I still fight the urge to create new little comfort zones inside my new world. Can't help it. Don't judge me. 

But what has come to light is that I don't have to leave my comfort zone, I just need to make it bigger. More experiences = more comfort. And the more diverse and interesting the experiences are, the more diverse and interesting we become. 

Every new experience guarantees a bigger comfort zone. If you try driving a new way to work, it's not new anymore. For example, I find myself writing this from atop a bucket in an unfinished electrical closet on the fifth floor of a construction site in downtown Pittsburgh. No bathroom, permanent power or even a chair to sit on. Sounds dreamy, right? It's really not a bad gig. This is not a place I ever thought I would find myself, and I certainly never expected it to be in my little realm of knowledge and comfort. (We have an 8-week old little girl at home if you wanna talk about leaving the comfort zone...)

Yet I find myself comfortable here and in places I never even knew existed. My goal is to try something new once a day, even if it's as simple as reading a new blog, making up new, goofy lyrics for kids' songs to sing to my daughter, or picking my nose left-handed. 

Any other suggestions, feel free to comment. Be gentle.