I Want to Break Free?

For the third time in a week, I flicked on the car radio and the sweet yet resolute mantra "I want to break freeeeee!" hit me head-on.
Seriously. Twice in the same week might be considered a coincidence... but surely three times qualifies as a divine message?? God... or Freddy Mercury... or my own subconscious?
Somebody is trying to tell me something.


The thing is, I DO want to break free.
But I'm not sure from what. Or why. Or where to go.
Does this ever happen to you?
The niggling feeling that you're just muddling along, happy enough, but perhaps not as happy as you could be?
And even as I write these self-indulgent lines, the Optimist in me is smiling wryly and thinking "you just need (another) holiday", and the Realist in me is frowning and cautioning: "You know that 99% of the inhabitants of this planet are not as lucky as you are."

But is it not OK to wonder sometimes? To ask yourself where you want to go from here, ideally... I mean, given that we do have the luxury of a slim catalogue of choices (I say "slim" because, you know, we have two kids and a mortgage and a fairly well-sharpened sense of responsibility... so that eliminates certain alternative lifestyles).

A few things have happened lately to prise open the Question box (the one in my head, I mean).

- Some very close friends moved house yesterday. We used to see them all the time: now they have joined the already swollen ranks of "friends we love but don't see very often".
They are the second ones to leave Toulouse in a year. So I wonder about places to live, and what counts most: culture, climate, family, friends, career prospects?

- We have been house hunting. We started off in the country, dreaming of simplicity and harmony... and the more we looked, the more we saw isolation and - dare I even think it? - boredom.
Then we started looking in town... and we saw Suburbia (and accompanying wave of panic).

- I am officially trying to change jobs. I thought about sleeping through the child-rearing years in a pressureless, mind-numbing job, and decided against it. I thought about handing in my resignation and trying to go it alone... then I opted for "change from the inside."

- Ingrid wrote about a couple she met who have opted to live on a boat. As I read this, the Dreamer in me started doing cartwheels (I absolutely love to hear about people who opt out of conventional society and live differently: it's my thing)... while the Cynic taunted: "You would go crazy within three days, and you know it!"

So I suppose I'm just sitting here pondering all this, and wondering what do it with it.
Live in the present and live every second to its full potential: that's my credo. But I need to see the big picture too.
I just have the sense that - for now - the colours are all mixed up, and the canvas is a little bare.

In the meantime, the work-in-progress that is life continues... and I remind myself that true contentment lies in the present moment.
Boredom - many would say - is happiness: better to be submerged with questions than consumed with worry, right?