Switching lives

Do you ever

wonder what life would be like if you could just be someone else? If you would live somewhere else and do something else with different people? I wonder about that all the time.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my life. I love my family and I love my friends and I love what I do and where I live. However, life isn’t always perfect and sometimes it’s just...dull. So every once in a while I get really restless and I just want something to be different.

Does that mean I should take matters into my own hands and radically change everything that is my life every time I get one of those whims? Probably not. To be honest, I am guessing that things could only get worse if I actually did that.

For example, often I dream about what would happen if I was one of those free spirits that take sabbaticals to travel the planet and live on whatever they can find wherever they are. Eh yeah, I am not going to do that though. No judgement whatsoever, but I am fairly sure that I would not survive that lifestyle. Different example; what if I decided to take myself up on the whim of saying I don’t give a shit anymore and I will just party every night and meet random strangers and say yes to everything? Again, I could probably get a lot of good stories but my future might not be that bright after all.

Anyways, there is light on the horizon because I’ve found a couple of things that I think are great ways to shake up life without actually, eh, shaking up life. So, I will give you two examples and I will tell you why I think that these are actually quite valuable experiences.

Okay, so number one is this program I read about recently. I can’t remember which company started it but here’s what happens. A lot of times employees get bored with what they are doing and they switch jobs. Usually this is not because they do not like the company or the work or whatever, but because they want a change of scene or a new challenge or something likewise vague and faraway. This company I read about wanted to keep its employees so instead of letting this happen they came up with a plan. High performing employees now get the chance of doing a trial period at a different department. They can for example spend six months at HR instead of their usual job at finance. This way they can try out a new challenge without leaving the company and with the safety net of being able to come back when it does not work out.

The beauty of this system is that, at least for your work environment, you can easily step into a different life and see if you actually like it or not. Beautiful. The downside is of course that it is still the same place you are working at and you are still living the same life all the hours beside your 40 hour work week.

My answer to this is as annoying as it is true; do an internship abroad. I feel like I am starting to be one of those annoying people who just keep sneaking in going abroad as a solution to everything. In any case, I was just sitting on the bus thinking how it kind of feels as though I am switching lives for 6 months. I am currently working instead of studying and I’m living in a completely different place and I’m socializing with a completely new group of people. So, basically the reason I am writing this is because I’ve always wanted that and I’ve only just now realised that that’s exactly what I’m doing here. Switching lives for 6 months. I’m still myself, obviously, but the circumstances are so crazy different.

I mean internships are always meant to give you a sort of sneak peak in the life that you are going to live after your studies, but when you do one abroad you can couple that with actually trying out something completely different. The beauty is that this is not just for when you’re studying. Even if you’ve already been working for a couple of years you can go out there and apply for an internship somewhere abroad to do a test run. Or, alternatively and possibly a bit more financially feasible, you can apply for a temporary job.

Now, here’s a couple of reasons why that is a good thing. For one, it really makes you aware of how important you are yourself. Not as in the bigger scheme of things, but as how important you are to your own life. Even after switching everything around, you will still have to deal with yourself. A lot of times even, especially at the start, you will have to deal only with yourself. How do you feel about that?

The second thing is that it puts things into perspective a lot. Different is not the same thing as better. As I said, I loved my life before coming here and I still love it right now and I can honestly not tell which I prefer. I guess the point is that you can’t put a value on your life and think that others have a better one. Your life is your life, no matter where you are or what you are doing.

In conclusion, go do an internship abroad or find this one rare company that actually has that department switching program. I am fairly sure you will not regret it and to be honest; if I, a pretty socially awkward, over-thinking, neurotic, family-attached kind of person can do it, then so can you.