Oh if only there were a book with this title.
And then inside the book a complete list of choices just for me.
Kind of like a choose your own adventure book, but just for my life. All the paths would be highlighted and the choices would have clear end results.
You know how when you saw Eat Pray Love, (the movie makes it more evident that the book) and realized what a selfish bitch Elizabeth Gilbert was being when she left her perfectly amazing husband and New York life behind to go out and find herself? I feel like that.
I have everything. Awesome kids, supportive and loving husband, a community and network established, a job I love (most of the time), and a home filled with books, photographs, and movies. What more could a gal ask for?
Well this year we have no big plans that I am excited about (no Europe). I have kind of given up on writing (I don't seem to have the patience to complete anything when it gets difficult). I have a very dead end job that makes very little money. The children are all locked into great schools. Our business is frustrating, but profitable.
It feels like sophomore year of college. You know what's going on and how to make it, and now you just have to slog through 3 more years to graduate and make the next life change: graduation.
But at my age and in this stage of life everything will remain pretty much status quo for the next 10 years when the last of my kids graduates from high school. It seems like a very long stretch of working and homework and dinners and shopping at Target.
How does one add spice into that? Tickets to Katy Perry shows? 2 week summer vacations with the family? A new car? Rearranging the furniture and painting the living room a new color?
I know it's the journey and not the destination in life, but what if that journey has turned into an endless road trip through the cornfields of Illinois. Even looking out the window isn't any fun anymore.
And yes before you ask I do have PMS. It's those few days before when my hormone levels are so low that I question my entire life and where it needs to go next. And then wouldn't you know it iTunes radio turns to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah and things gets really existential.
That new Apple commercial with Robin Williams monologue from Dead Poets Society is really getting to me and the ad is on constantly. It really doesn't make me want to buy Apple Products, but does make me question what I am doing now to add verse. "The powerful play goes on and YOU may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"
I've had this discussion here before about the importance of adding a verse. Does it make me any more or less of a person if I add a verse. We can't all be big important people in life. Somebody has to just deliver the mail. Somebody will just be really good at painting road stripes. I may be here solely to be an awesome mother to my children. What if that is my verse? How am I to know?
Making a change just to change is usually not a good idea. Should we pack up and move to Belize like those people we see on House Hunters? Should we sell our business and relocate? Should we downsize so that we have more family time and money to travel? Should we try to eat healthier? Is it just the pressure of a New Year and the need to do better than last year? Or is it just Jan/Feb and I'm in the doldrums?
I know there aren't any answers to my questions. Only time will tell. Hell, next week I'll probably be fine and excited about something that I don't even know about today. But in the meantime, damn, today is difficult for no reason at all.
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