{"id":138,"date":"2011-03-31T17:53:16","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T16:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/?p=138"},"modified":"2011-03-31T17:53:16","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T16:53:16","slug":"the-impact-of-reducing-your-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/archives\/138","title":{"rendered":"The Impact of Reducing your Options"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well it seems like my blogging output has fallen off, as so many blogs tend to do. It would almost seem predictable<\/a>; nevertheless I will soldier on.<\/p>\n

So the last time I wrote a post of any substance was to announce that we had decided to move back to Vancouver. In the aftermath of that decision I’ve found it a very interesting period of self-discovery. I had always assumed that making this decision about whether to stay or move back would be very similar to the decision to come here in the first place. I’ve since found that it’s not – it’s very different.<\/p>\n

When we chose to come here, we were opening new possibilities without fully closing the door on our “old life”. England was a place of unknown opportunities; it felt exciting. In so many ways this experience has fulfilled those anticipations – you try and take out of a place the things you like, especially those things that are different from what you’ve known.<\/p>\n

The decision of whether to move back or to stay here is one that closes<\/em> opportunities – it is the opposite of last year. I wasn’t prepared for that, and I can see why some people find it so hard to make decisions like this. You feel genuinely torn, and you don’t want to close the door on either option. But we also knew that we wanted to make a decision so that we could move on and put roots down. As long as you are straddling two options and never fully committing, your options are open but your commitment is shallow.<\/p>\n

I also found it interesting that as soon as you shut the door on a place it immediately holds greater value to you (you start to focus on what you’re losing). It is hard to talk to friends here and tell them that we’re going to be leaving. In addition to feeling a bit guilty, you’re also not sure how to invest in relationships – do you try to continue to build bonds knowing that they’re not going to last? But then we still have four months here and it doesn’t seem right to just while away time until then.<\/p>\n

I want to try and continue building relationships, despite the fact that we’ll be leaving in a few months – it seems the right thing for me to do. The caveat is that you don’t want to create an unnecessary void when you do leave. It also makes me realize again how important it is with friendships to try and build deeper bonds – I hope to do that more when we move back to Vancouver again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well it seems like my blogging output has fallen off, as so many blogs tend to do. It would almost seem predictable; nevertheless I will soldier on. So the last time I wrote a post of any substance was to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[34,33],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mike","category-update","tag-decisions","tag-friendships"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1aZFm-2e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goetz.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}