Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The one in which I am a little stuck

I am stuck. This is my thirtieth year of life. It is all propaganda and hype to think you should have things figured out by the time you are thirty and yet EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US HUMANS THINKS THIS. I want to feel... like I imagined grown ups to feel when I was an awkward depressed teenager who felt so lost in her own skin that she wore pajamas to school. I want to feel THERE. I want to feel like I always knew what I wanted out of life and then I went out and found it and it was thrilling and challenging and dynamic and wonderful.

Those things are all really true. I have a really really great little girl. She makes me work for every minute not filled with screaming but she is WONDERFUL. The way the word was really meant to be used. And I am married to man who is good. Really really good. A man who never stops growing and learning and making me laugh hysterically over very very stupid things.

And yet, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I have a masters degree. I have an advanced license. I am good at my job. I really am... most days. Growing up in a fundamental charismatic church as a teenager, it was drilled in my head that I was created for something great. I believed that a supreme being thought of me, every cell of me, and made me in just the exact way to meet some cosmic need. It was a little grandiose, but I was a teenager. It is the nature of our not completely formed brains to be so.

Although a lot of sleepless nights and endless theoretical arguments have passed since those grandiose days and I am in a very different place in terms of my cosmic beliefs, the thought of being specifically created to do a specific kind of good is a thought I can not completely shake loose. I want to do SOMETHING, something great. Right now, I have a job that is good at shocking people and making them pity me. And it is great. I am able to do some real good. But, it also makes me cry most Tuesdays at 9am. And Thursdays. And Fridays. It is a job where I know I am on the side of good and yet I have no freakin clue what good is up to these days and no idea how to figure out in which direction she is headed. I am a clinical social worker. It is a beautiful, fun, soul destroying, life sucking job.

I have come to a place where I am pretty sure I need a break from this work or I will lose something. I am not sure what that something is but I am positive that I don't want to lose it. I am positive that the something is a something I want to keep forever. I feel terrible about this knowledge. I feel terrible about the knowledge that I need to take a break. It feels like the kind of failure they write tragedies about (they being Shakespeare). I am not the kind of girl that can quit her job and raise beautiful children and write a blog about Jesus, sprinkles, rick rack, and Steve Jobs (although all those things have importance). That sentence is condescending. I know it. But under all that snarky barky is longing, is jealousy, plain and simple. I want to feel like I know the direction in which I am headed.  I want to feel self assured. I want to spend a lot of time and money redecorating my living room and getting paid for it.

I have a lot of ideas. I am not sure I have the balls for them. Sorry, for the crassness. It is that kind of night. The idea of the night is to create a party planning store. Think Jordan Ferney meets Spool, not Party City.  But, I probably won't do it. For a million reasons, all sort of good and sort of not good.

So, this post is optimistic, right? Yeah, I'm getting there.

Here are a couple of pictures from Alma's second birthday party just to help me build some self esteem and make this most worth reading:











2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i heart you. entirely.

MR said...

you have already done so much great. and you will continue to do so much great. you will never not be and do great even if you tried. most always it takes time to grow into something new and different. you, my friend, are on that path of growth. prickly, isn't it though?