What if I Hadn't...

a prompt.

I was doing some writing exercises in my 642 things to write about book, and one that I thought was really interesting was:

Choose one decision you made/action you took and imagine a world where you hadn't made that decision. You hadn't dated that person, taken that job, chosen that car. My first thought was about my move to N Conway.

I think about this a lot, actually, because one of the things I like to do the most is to drive my car. When I am by myself and don't have any great conversation/company to keep me still, I can jump into my car, Jasper, and drive off anywhere as I blast my favorite track. Now. I didn't get my license until I was living in N Conway. And the only reason I ended up getting it was because someone who lived in N Conway let me borrow their van to take my test in. Not to mention; the fact that you don't have to parallel park to pass the New Hampshire driver's test didn't hurt. So! Since I get so much joy out of driving (you can visit anyone you want! You miss 'em? Go see 'em!), I often think back to when I didn't have one, what made me finally get one and what would've happened if I hadn't been in that specific scenario. Here we go!

I was working as a shift leader, essentially, at a retail shop (let's call it Jamie's). For one reason or another, my job was the most important thing to me at that time and I wanted to move up up up! I wanted to be manager. Of the store. Of all stores. OF THE WORLD. In order to do this, I could either wait around forever, OR take the opportunity to be part of the management team in a different building right away! A different building in a different state. And I didn't have a car. I didn't know anyone down there. I wouldn't be able to make friends down there because I would be everybody's boss (OR the people I could've been friends with were significantly older than I was at the time, so they felt weird around me). Since my job was numbero uno at the time, I said "SURE, I'll go down there somehow with my mother and 3 cats and no car, stay in a motel room the size of a matchbox with no fridge/kitchen and a shower that a grown adult cannot even fit in. But only if I can spend all of my tax returns and savings. I can? Well how about the cats - oh I'll have to pretend we don't have two of them? I'll be walking an hour and a half to and from work every day/night regardless of the ever-present local collection of bears? AND the toilet's on the fritz? I'm there!"

There were plenty of hurdles throughout my time there. More than anyone would care to read about, surely. However, there were so many great things that came out of it. Things that benefit me to this day. Very good for my long-run. If I had never gone to live there for a year, I would've probably just stayed at the original Jamie's, in town, and either become a manager person, or simply stayed in that building as a shift leader because of the fear of change. I would have never moved to Mill Town years later to work in that seasonal restaurant. I would have never met G (who also lived in NH), who I met while visiting a friend back home. He gave me the courage to travel more and do more with my life and get my license and later stay in a sweet houseboat in Florida for my 27th birthday. I would not have reconnected with the friends who came to see me while I was in NH nor the ones who missed me while I was away, one who reconnected me with the friends I live with now. I would have never met Elle, who is still a best friend and who gave me the courage to fly out to DC and stay at my first air BnB just to attend a concert. Who made me strive to be a more independent, strong, adventurous woman. I wouldn't have had a reason to work with my restaurant fam/connect with my family of hooligans. I would have not known what it was like to live away from my mother. To have a life of my own. I can even see the good in my time spent at my horrible grandmother's house after I came back from NH; it's fueling the story I am currently writing (and loving).

I would have had a safe, boring, dim, grim life. One that would not have been even half as full of love and connection as my life is now.