I was thinking today about my initial dread of coming to America, and my terror at what seemed like a blank, open, empty life stretching before me, bereft of all the things that shaped my daily life back in London: going to the gym, travelling to work, working, seeing friends, the necessity of doing housework, of cooking - all the while having at the back of my head an awareness of what a fabulously rich culture London has to offer in terms of theatres, lectures, art galleries, historical sights and all the myriad of things that make up its teeming, bustling kaleidoscope of a microcosm.

Today I realised just how much of my time in London was spent in trying to fit everything in - friends, laundry, cooking, gym etc etc. The nature of London was such that everything became exhausting - yes, I could pop down to the shops when I needed a pint of milk, as opposed to here, where I have to get in the car and drive, but everything equally took so much longer. I lived in Clapham, and if I wanted to go and see a friend in Fulham, it would often take me the best part of an hour to get there, despite it only being a few miles away. Then I had to consider the last tube home, or trying to find a parking space when I got there, or remembering the lights for my bike if I was cycling. Meanwhile trying to fit everything in meant that I always felt on the back foot - guilty that I hadn't seen a friend with a new baby for weeks, short changed that I hadn't been able to spend long enough at the gym, hassled and stressed that the laundry was never ending and always had to be fitted in between the breakfast toast and trying to leave the house on time for work. As for taking advantage of the culture - forget it. Occasionally I would get to an exhibition - and leave feeling guilty that it was something I didn't do more often, wracked with that emotion rather than the pleasure of simply enjoying what I had seen and learnt.

Here the same daily tasks apply - there is still washing to be done, we still have to be fed. But, in the absence of so many friends, and living in something more akin to a wilderness than a big city, life becomes pared down somewhat - simpler, less stressful. With that comes an opening up of horizons. With fewer demands on my time in the form of having to make money (I am very lucky in that I don't have to have a job out here) and fit in a hectic social life, I am discovering that the world is my oyster with very few boundaries on what I can and cannot do.

Of course there is still a tension - there is so much that I want to do that I feel the familiar guilt creeping up every so often - that I have not spent long enough reading the text for my next writing class, or that I wish I could spend longer writing this blog, for example. But surely that tension is what makes up the joy of life in some capacity? After all, what I was dreading was a surfeit of time - an existence spent solely doing those menial tasks that so quickly become unsatisfying in their very repetitiveness - the laundry, the cooking, and so on. I am one of those people for whom life needs to be full in order to achieve anything - if I have very little to do I end up doing nothing at all, whereas if my day is so jam packed with things that it seems there is not enough time to do anything, I manage to achieve much more, and, arguably, an output of far higher quality. If I did not have a full calendar, for example, I would have nothing to write about in this blog, other than the daily view out of the kitchen window. The joy of moving to somewhere outside of your comfort zone is making something meaningful out of life. I had forgotten what that was like. I was so comfortable in my daily routine of stressfully trying to fit everything in that I had failed to reach out and try the new things - there simply wasn't time.

I'm not sure if I'm making much sense here, but perhaps I can make an analogy through landscape. London is a series of villages. Despite living in one of the greatest cities in the world, its inhabitants tend to stay in their own areas and rarely venture out into new areas of the capital to explore. There's no need, after all - everything is on your doorstep. And so we settle into that comfortably full routine of trying to fit everything in and not stretching our horizons.

America, by contrast - or certainly Kansas, is huge, vast - a wide open expanse of rolling hills (yes, hills, it's not all just prairie). And you have to travel to get to certain things - I drive 40 minutes twice a week to get to Lawrence, where the university is; we drive the same distance the other way to get to Kansas City. You have to do it - there's nothing where we are. And, as you drive through the landscape appreciating just how huge it is, you get a sense of possibility, of the vista opening up. It is intoxicating, this feeling of being able to do anything, be anyone. Having foolishly dreaded being forced out of my comfort zone, I have come to appreciate it enormously. I highly reccommend it.