There are points in life when you start to feel the need for a change. It happens to everyone. I, myself, have googled the question by which this post earned its title more times than I can remember.

More often than not, when I start to seek advice on how to escape from it all it’s when everything I’ve felt pressured by, school, work, family, friends, bills , et cetera, piles up to the point where I felt as though I would either burst or collapse with the effort of keeping it all together. I’d imagine myself drifting off, losing all contact and starting over. Sometimes the places I’d drift to would be simple places, like a new city in a new state, but as I grew old the places became more extravagant. I would day dream of a new country or being a boat out at sea belonging to no nation.

In the past, when I felt this way, I would usually contend myself with an online search for far off places and the promise that one day I would visit those places. Then I would return to normal life, slightly less overwhelmed than I had been. But every once in a while this mounting desire to escape everything I know did reach an actual breaking point. I can narrow these moments down to six spots in my personal timeline, six pivotal moments where instead of just thinking about running away, I did it.

Just as most of you reading this probably are, I am a rational person. I try to think things through and plan ahead. Mostly. This fact makes it extremely difficult to run away. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. Have hope reader, this is not another blog about dreaming of running off in the night, this is a blog about how to actually do it.
As I said, in my adult life I have actually run away a totally of six times. Once directly following college, once when a family member needed me, and thrice when I just plain became bored with my situation.
After college was easy. I’d finished with a degree and needed a change. Obvious. This played a major role in my realization of the benefit of not running away, but running towards.

There is a lot of focus when someone is running away on the actual ‘away’ factor of it all. It may make sense, but it honestly is not be the best thing to focus on. If you focus too much on getting away from something, you start to lose focus on what you might find once you’ve made it away from the thing you’re escaping. From experience I can tell you, this makes for a lonely life once you’ve landed in your new home. You’ve spent so long thinking about what you’re about to leave that you don’t know what to focus on once you’ve gotten away from it. You end up in a new place with no direction or course of action. This may seem exciting as a concept, but then you realize the amount of work goes into making new friends, finding a home, getting a job and everything else you need to put into place just to satisfy your basic needs.
Instead of thinking of running away as your great escape, it would be best to find something to run towards.

After college, I was running away from a city, an ex-girlfriend, toxic people and a lack of possibilities for creative outlets as well as career goals. I was running away from a lot. And I learned once I got away that I now had to find something new to focus on. I’d spent so much time dwelling on all the negative that I would be free of that I didn’t consider how much I would have to reboot my thought process. In just the time it took for me to drive from New Mexico to Illinois I had all this free space in my head that used to be taken up by those negatives. And it scared me. I felt the void that this move created in me. Even though I’d purged myself of negative thoughts and feelings, I had nothing to replace them. I felt empty.

And it took me months to recover.

The next time I ran away, instead of leaving in a panic, I set my sites on a far off place where people were waiting for me. I chose to move to cities where I would have family, so instead of focusing on getting away from a drab city I could find a city where I could spend time with family. I now had a positive to fill the void that running away creates.
If you don’t have extended family or friends drifting about the country that are willing support you through this move, your other option is a job. Every so often I will toss a job application out to a position in a city I’ve never been to. This may seem silly at first, but once I’ve started applying on jobs outside of my city, I start to think of all the potential. What if I got a job two states away? What if I accepted the offer and I had to move in a month?

Thoughts like that would refresh me and get me thinking of life outside my little bubble. I would see potential in a life I haven’t lived yet. It makes the day-to-day struggles much more palatable. It also makes me feel productive, which is huge for me because I start to get depressed if I don’t feel productive.

I’ve moved for a job twice in my adult life, and I want to say that moving to a new city where I already had work lined-up was so much better than moving to be near family. For one, I instantly felt productive and useful. Sure when I moved for family I had a feeling of being welcome, but being able to instantly appropriate into a new member of society calmed a lot of my nerves that normally light up when I move to a new place.

If you don’t have family in other states or a job waiting for you, it is entirely possible to skip out on life and start over. It’s also entirely possible to drop out of high school then become hugely successful. It’s possible, but there are also easier ways to do it.
As a man who has run away from a lot, I have run towards so much more. And since I’ve started doing that, I’ve found I am a lot happier. You can still find a more exciting life, reader. You can leave toxic environments, people, and jobs. You have so much potential. Don’t waste it on rushing into the next step. Take your time, settle on something positive you can achieve rather than something negative that you can overcome.

As always, reader, thank you so much for stopping by and reading some of my thoughts. Until next time.