Life

Things are going in some interesting directions of late.  I finally realized I was chasing all the wrong things in life, and put a halt to what I could.  And so I write this as your average mom/grad school dropout.  I've been in grad school for what feels like a billion years.  I got one master's degree, and graduated right when the market crashed and I had no hope of finding a job, and getting in shape and stripping was going to be more of a time commitment than school, so I just went back.  I was taking business classes, and almost at my post-grad certificate, when something in me just...broke.  I couldn't make myself go to class.  I couldn't make myself care about anything I was studying.  I missed my kid, and my husband, and my life.

So I quit.

Anyone who thinks this is not a big deal wasn't raised in my family.  In our family, you don't quit.  You keep plugging away at whatever you're doing and YOU BE GOOD AT IT or ELSE.  I never quite figured out what the or ELSE was, but my mom scared me enough that I didn't want to find out.  So I ended up doing a lot of things I really hated, and becoming deathly afraid of failure.

Which is kind of stupid.  I mean, everyone who was a success was a failure at some point.  Einstein, Bill Gates....there's lots.  Google that shit if you're interested.  I'm not making a list for you, my research days are OVER.  Quitting grad school was a good move for me.  I don't feel like a failure and my life didn't end.  I spend more time with my kid and I"m restructuring what I want to do with my life.

That whole "figuring it out" thing isn't going so well.  I took the good job with the good money and the good insurance, and I'm not leaving anytime soon because, you know, insurance is nice.  But I don't see myself there for life (which I think my boss realizes).  But what do I want to be when I grow up?

Really, a humor writer.  With a kickass job at a nonprofit on the side, saving the bay or local food or women's uteruses.  I want a job that lets me be the social miscreant I am at heart.  My next door neighbor is a stay at home mom, and she was just saying that she felt like staying at home was causing her to regress in her adulthood.  I told her not to worry, I go to work every day and I think I'm regressing, too.  I'm trying to remember what made me excited when I was young and stupid and idealistic, and to think about what I might actually be good at.  It's a scary thing to even put that out there, because there's such a small chance that I'd ever make it as a writer.  But you never know.

Now if only I'd figured out all of this and that money isn't what's important before I bought a lot of stuff I now have to work to pay for....