Over the last year and a half, we’ve heard it time and time again… “it’s the big change”, people are changing jobs, going back to school, breaking off relationships or maybe starting new relationships, trying new things. There’s nothing quite like a worldwide pandemic to motivate you to do something that you might have never would have tried to do before. Excuses, sometime great and sometimes inconsequential, standing between you and what you want. I, myself had a brand-new job that I thought would “be the best opportunity of my career” pulled right out from underneath my feet and it left me wanting and searching for answers to the question “now what?” Venues that were once open seemed now closed. I kept asking myself how do I get to what I want? Is it worth the risk in this uncertain time? I felt like Bilbo Baggins, stuck between what I knew was easy and something undefined, scary even.
J.R.R. Tolkien has always been a favorite author of mine. The Hobbit filled my head full of adventure from a very young age. The quote mentioned above from that book has been on my mind a lot lately. Since March of 2020, people in the news, on social media, my friends and family have been searching for answers: to the disease, to how life has brought them to this point, to what to do next, how to move on. Some days the answers seem easy: I know that I will find normalcy and comfort in visiting my favorite coffee shop (as long as it stays open), by talking with my friends or going to my favorite activities. Other days, the search of what to do with your life during a pandemic seems insurmountable. Do I really want to go back to college? How am I going to afford a career change? Is the career change really what I need or want? Is this really what I am looking for?
Like Bilbo Baggins, there is much anxiety when we contemplate going on a potentially-life changing adventure. It is unsettling to interrupt our routines and yet we can’t quite get the possibility of the good things that might come from it out of our heads. In the end there’s nothing left to do but pack your bag, take a deep breath, and keep walking forward. We may not have all the answers to all of life’s questions, but takings risks, in putting ourselves out there we open ourselves up to finding something (a job opportunity, a group of people, a new activity) that perhaps we did not know we were looking for.
-Brittany Hill
Sites of Girlhood Manager
Girl Museum Inc.