The thought occurred to me that I’m going stir crazy, and I immediately wondered how “stir crazy” is actually defined. I found this on wikipedia.

Stir crazy is a phrase that dates to 1908 according to the Oxford English Dictionary^[1] and the online Etymology Dictionary. Used among inmates in prison, it referred to a prisoner who became mentally unbalanced because of prolonged incarceration. It is based upon the slang stir (1851) to mean prison.

It is now used to refer to anyone that becomes restless from being stuck in one place too long, with a similar meaning to cabin fever.

Apparently, I’m using exactly the right term to describe how I feel. I feel stir crazy. I feel incarcerated. I hate that I get this way.

I hate staying in one place for too long. When I was a child we moved every few years, and now in adulthood I feel the urge to pack up and move after about a year in the same place. Even a few months without a nice long drive makes me a little crazy.

The last little road trip we took our car had a fit, we’re trying not to go anywhere until we buy a new one. It hasn’t been that long, but I feel like I could crawl out of my skin. It’s not just something I feel when I think about it, it’s a general all day feeling that makes it hard to sit still and stop myself from running down the road and hopping on a bus to anywhere.

I feel like I should be able to tell myself to stop it, sit still, you should be content with what you have. And then, as soon as I have the thought, I reject the idea completely. I don’t WANT to live like that. Life is a daring adventure or nothing, right?

It just doesn’t make things any easier right now.

I don’t really have any thoughts about what I’m supposed to do about the issue of right now and feeling stir crazy, but I don’t think I’d really rather feel any other way.