How many years should you wait to see if what you're doing is what you want to do?

Given my current work dilemma, I'm reflecting on the experiment of giving yourself a year and seeing if you still feel the same way. I first made this experiment on the second or third trip back to Denver, post-relationship-apocalypse. It was the first trip, ever, in which I thought, "Yeah, I could live here again," and when I got back to Sydney I thought, "Yeah, I could see moving away from here." There was a separate Sydney experiment, starting at the time of my return from that trip home, when I reflected on the fact that I didn't have any super-close friends, no one I talked to every day about what I was doing, no one who had my back if I needed anything (remember the moving experience? I still didn't have one of those by then). So, I thought, I'll give myself a year, and if things haven't got any better, I will think about moving back.

I remember talking to another Yank friend, over pizza and red wine, at about this time, and she wisely pointed out that if I started saving some money, it could be for either a house deposit or to fund a move back home.

The move back home opportunity came sooner than I could save the money to fund it, and in fact it was sponsored by my current employer, so I didn't need to save that much after all.

Now I've been here nearly a year, don't have the boxes unpacked, and don't have a good friend who cares what I do every day and who has my back if I needed anything. I probably have much less of that than I did in Sydney. And now my job is being taken away, the job that was such a good fit for me - my boss has been gone since July 1, and now the job itself is being restructured in a way that makes it a less good fit.

So, should I stay or should I go? My first instinct was to go, and I've already put inquiries out about Plan B, which would be in Milwaukee, which would in every way be a better place for me to live - 1.5 million people in the greater metro area, as opposed to 150,000 here, and a quick train ride to the center of Chicago rather that a difficult 4 hour drive. Lots more folks, probably lots more counterculture, a great museum, lots of live music, a groovy downtown, a higher percentage chance that there might be someone interesting and single. Not so rural, not so "great place to raise a family", not so much drive your kids to baseball practice after work, perhaps a bit more go after work for a drink.

But, you know, risk and insecurity, and moving hassles, and do you think the prospect of having to unpack my kitchen and organize all my books myself might just do me in, bring on a thoroughgoing nervous breakdown? What if I have to live in a smaller place, or can only afford someplace a ways out of town? What if I have to drive back and forth to Appleton all the time and put that many more miles on my car? I would have to find a new doctor, dentist, eye doctor, guitar teacher, and venue for leftist discussion groups. One good thing is I can take my gym and my chemist with me, since they are national chains. Insurance, phone service, cable, internet. Could I bear it? Would it break me for good?

So, I had the fleeting thought, maybe I could do my new improved restructured job here, and give it a year, and see if I'm happy at the end of that year.

But how many more years do I have? Can I afford to spend many more of them seeing if unsatisfactory lives become satisfactory?

I don't really know what I want, but I wish I could get it sooner and stop wasting all this fucking time trying to make decisions about what I want.