Should I Stay, Or Should I Go?

If you had asked me a week ago what the chance of going back to school versus staying where I'm at was, I would have said it was about 70% to 30%. Today it's about 90% to 10%. I wonder what it'll be next week?

I made a list last week with reasons to stay and reasons to go. I want to examine that list in greater detail and see how my perspective has changed over the last week.

Last Weeks Reasons To Stay
Friends - both in Lansing and Grand Rapids
Living near my family
I have a house that is somewhat tough to just get rid of
A stable job with good pay
Leaving will be about a $70k a year hit. 50 grand I could have made, 20 grand tuition
Maria, wanting to see where things will go with her
I know what each new day will bring
I have time and money to enjoy material things
Retirement Savings
Good Benefits
I enjoy volunteering at the Mother Teresa House
I feel tied down

Last Weeks Reasons To Go
Dead end job
Don't want to work in a cubicle my entire life
Could learn Spanish
Can get out of Lansing and Michigan, which I've wanted for quite a while
4 to 5 years of school will be 4 to 5 years of experiencing new things and meeting people
Gives me a fresh start to life
Jill or someone else could get a cheap place to live (Renting my house)
I can sell a lot of my material things and detach myself from them
The excitement of something new
Doing God's will (If leaving is what He wants from me)
I could do volunteer work after school, before getting a job again
I'll meet lots of new people
Friendships in Lansing are changing anyway, and as people marry I'll be losing friends
Better chance of finding a wife
May be able to travel to Austria for a semester
I'd be surrounded by lots of good people
Could take a week long vacation this summer
I feel tied down, and I shouldn't
I can always go back to programming if it dosen't work out

I do really enjoy my friends here in Lansing, but other than Jill and Heidi I don't have anyone who I'd say is a really close friend. All my guy friends are at a different place in life or on a different level spiritually and intellectually so I've never been able to connect with them on a deep level. I at least have my brother David for that, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I know that wherever I go I'll have no problem meeting people and making new friends, and it won't take long to get a group of people that I know that I can relate to on the same level as 99% of the people here in Lansing.

I really do enjoy living close to my parents and it's great to have them around, but that isn't enough of a reason to actually keep me in Lansing. They'll be moving away in 5 or 6 years when my dad retires anyway, so there isn't any sense in me sticking around for that. I'll still see them if they come to visit me and when I come home.

My house is looking to be less of a reason to stick around. I talked to Jill this week to see if she would be interested in renting from me since she mentioned that she's looking for a new place to live. I still need to check over all the finances to give her a final quote, but she sounded interested if the monthly rent stays around my initial quote. That'd be awesome if she could live here. It's a great location for her since it's between school and her parents place. It'll still be a week or two before I know the house situation, but its less of a reason to stay.

My job is great as a programming job, but it's a dead end job. I'm not the sort of person they are looking for in a manager and after about 6 years I'll be as high up as I could ever go. I could still have a comfortable life outside of work and its low stress enough that I could slide through until retirement. I don't feel that's my calling though. God made me to be great and to make a difference in this world and I'll never do that at Auto-Owners.

The 70 grand a year financial hit sounds like quite a lot, but it doesn't concern me as long as going back to school is what God is asking me to do. I trust that he'll take care of me as long as I'm doing his will so money isn't an issue.

Hah, and then there's Maria. We met just over a month ago when I went white water rafting in West Virginia with some friends. I was having the hardest time figuring out what God wanted for the two of us. Our personalities really click well and we can talk for hours and hours, and it was just two weekends ago that we stayed up until 6:30 in the morning talking while we were camping with friends. I felt like God was really giving me mixed signals of whether to stay or go because he was putting us in situations where we had a chance to get to know each other a lot better and I started getting quite attached to her. At the same time, I really felt like I should go back to school because she was encouraging me to do so and I respected her opinion enough to take it into account. For the last three weeks I felt like I was in a tug-a-war between my head and my heart, and what I should do and what I wanted to do. I felt I should stay because of her, and I thought I should go because of her motivating me to do so. This week we were able to have a conversation about our friendship and we decided it was best for it to not be more than just a friendship. It was kind of dissapointing, but at the same time it was really freeing. I no longer felt pulled to stay because of her.

Life is very predictable for me right now. I know what every day is going to bring and I'm riding along peacefully in my comfort zone. I know that I work Monday through Friday from 7:00 to 3:30. I go to Grand Rapids on Monday to play soccer with Erin and Maria, I play basketball and go to Mass and confession on Tuesdays, I play sports with friends from St. Thomas Aquinas on Wednesday, every other Thursday I volunteer at the Mother Teresa house, and I spend my Friday evening and Saturday and Sunday with friends and family. It's a good life and I love it, so it's tough to step outside of predictability and forge ahead into the unknown.

Thanks to my job I have everything I could ever want when it comes to material things. I'm not rich, and I don't have all that much stuff, but I have what I need to live a comfortable life and I have lots of things I don't need that I enjoy. I know that I've grown an unhealthy attachment to the things in my life and going away to college and going back to the simple life would help cure me of that. I know it'll be tough at first, but it would be totally worth it.

This Weeks Reasons To Stay
My house (maybe)
Jill and Heidi
Volunteering at the Mother Teresa House

This Weeks Reasons To Go
Everything from last week, and more