i am jack's relentless discontent.

Lately, I find myself preoccupied and fascinated with the idea of change and discontent..

This preoccupation comes to me in the setting of my 4th move within 2 years since moving to Salt Lake City...

I have to wonder, is discontent just moving along with me, or am I moving away from discontent, even if in a slow and wide spiral..

Since moving to Utah, I've been told by friends or mentors that they suspect I have some sort of internal or innate discontent seeded within me that is traveling with me, haunting me.

These people often recommend things to me such as: psychotherapy, prescription antidepressants, etc.

I have been continually surprised and sort of offended by this genre of accusation. Since moving here, I have attributed my discontent directly to my incompatibility with this particular job. And this job is certainly a very reasonable explanation for discontent. This is a miserable job located in a place with a culture almost incompatible with life.

It makes sense that discontent which is rooted in something you are unable to free yourself from in the moment does tend to move with you until you are able to break free.

However, despite my theory of job dissatisfaction and loneliness directly creating a temporary and reversible discontent, I also have to admit to a long tradition in my life of creating unrealistic expectations. I'm a proud and devoted dreamer and wanderer. My visions and ideals about reality are always much better sorted out than actuality.

It seems that from time to time I am able to rally and come to terms with the reality of my life, accept the fact that things are what they are... I'll settle into a relationship, do my job every day, go to bed every night after performing the same rituals..

But inevitably, one day I wake up and feel completely suffocated.

It just happened again. The place I was living was stale. The way I was living was stale.

The place I was living was a nice condo with a pool. My room was large and nice, it looked like most of my rooms with lots of pictures and clutter that I can't seen to get rid of because it reminds me of something fun or special. The community itself was sort of like a retirement community. It was amusing. I'm fairly certain if I had stayed long enough, one of my 90-something-year-old neighbors would have fallen and broken their hip.

The apt was beige. You know those houses that are entirely beige and brown and relentlessly clean? That's what that place was like. It felt like the kind of home in which you would never think twice about remembering to take your shoes off at the door. It seemed as if the table had never been set, the kitchen had never been used, the fireplace had never been lit, and the sofa looked too unruffled to sit on. The fridge was organized. The shelves had a linear row of water bottles adjacent to the same in red bull and the same in diet coke... And that was the only thing in the fridge..

So one day I woke up in this condo and checked my email to find a message from a boy inviting me to go over for dinner.

The relationship I was in was something different from most others I've had. I had been so excited about this guy.. He's good looking, smart, great kisser, we have similar interests in music and hobbies, both like to cook and drink wine.. I've almost felt like I was in love with him at times. "Love" --- not as in "I feel like I'm in love with you" ----but more like "I could easily do this forever." I was so comfortable with him. Sure, he has his flaws, but mine are probably worse and he seems to like me OK despite those flaws. I thought it was a good sign that I liked him more and more over time, though in retrospect this was probably more about ease and comfort than love and passion.

I mentally projected forward through this boring day of listening to patients' endless complaint after complaint after complaint to sitting over the same dinner I've eaten a thousand times since meeting this guy, drinking the same wine, and likely having a very similar conversation to what we usually do.. He's one of those guys that talks just to hear himself talk.. this would go on to the point where neither of us was listening to a damned word, but it didn't really matter anyway.

Suddenly, I had to cleanse and purge. I broke up with my roommate, her apartment, and the boy, went apartment hunting, and within a single day had a life that was wholly unrecognizable to the life I was living the day before.

I don't know what made me do it this time exactly, but usually it's a glimmer of something better that triggers my action.. this happens to everyone at some point... like when all of a sudden, you get it into your head to buy a new, fancy TV, and until you buy that stupid TV every time you sit down to your old TV the people all look like they have a greenish tint and are kind of blurry. Even if you never noticed that before.

So I moved into a basement apt below a fabulous and fun gay couple who have renovated a historic Avenues mansion. They threw a wine party to introduce me to the neighbors.

It was immediately satisfying.

My gnawing, haunting discontent always returns though.. And now, after a short string of rash decisions, here I am. Again.. Sitting in someone else's rented, furnished apartment.. Staring down into the barrel of another failed relationship... Discontented. And Alone.

I guess I am starting to acknowledge what my accusers are referring to....

I think it's pretty ironic though because this feeling and general state of "discontent" is almost comforting to me in it's familiarity. Because to me, at least it means something better or at least different is on the horizon when I was not happy before. Change equals hope.

Although I am starting to recognize how dysfunctional my way of coping with discontent may be, I do still hesitate and actually fight against the concept of dealing with my discontent by altering my thought process through psychotherapy or changing my serotonin concentration in my brain.. And I fight with even more aggression against putting down roots into this sea of discontent for the sake of security, choosing stagnant and festering relationships or buying furniture or houses to tie me down while providing an illusion of comfort..

I sometimes wonder if I am wrong to flee rather than accept that life is simply not exactly how I wanted it to be? Perhaps content comes from a mere acceptance of "the way things are."

I suppose I would believe that argument more readily if I haven't already experienced "it" before.. But I know I've lived a satisfying life at times. I've lived in a place that I adored with so much intensity. I've loved and been loved back at times. I've been really, truly happy at times. Maybe it's naive, but I believe true content and happiness is out there. And I don't really want to learn how to trick myself or my brain into believing otherwise.

I think I prefer to agree with Graham Greene on this topic..

To me comfort is like the wrong memory at the wrong place or time; if one is lonely one prefers discomfort.

The rootless have experienced, like all others, the temptation of sharing the security of a religious creed or a political faith, and for some reason we have turned the temptation down. We are the faithless; we admire the dedicated....for their courage and their integrity, for their fidelity to a cause, but through timidity or through lack of sufficient zest, we find ourselves the only ones truly committed - committed to the whole world of evil and of good, to the wise and to the foolish, to the indifferent and to the mistaken. We have chosen nothing except to go on living, 'rolled round on Earth's diurnal course, With rocks and stones and trees,'

Comedians, Graham Greene