It's Been Awhile.

I have not written in quite a while, here or anywhere else.  I don't know what to do with myself; am sitting in kind of a limbo.  I graduate on Friday.  Even though I've been celebrating that fact every day for two months, it still doesn't seem real.  I'm not sure what to do next.

I realize that I have a really hard time just going along to get along.  When things fall into routine and are no longer interesting or challenging, I have a need to change it up.  That has been evident in my entire career.  Not knowing what it is that I'd truly love to do, I find myself constantly looking for the next thing to "try and see."  It appears that every five years or so I not only change jobs, but change careers entirely.

I committed to my bible study group to fully commit myself to the job I have for the next quarter.  Slowly I'm making progress in that direction.  I started by getting up and taking a shower in the morning.  As silly as THAT sounds, it is so much easier to roll out of bed at 7:00 and open my door, then shower at nap-time.  However, in an attempt to treat this like a "real job," I am getting presentable BEFORE I open.  Imagine that!

My second step is to get up even earlier to take 15 minutes to stretch and do a little bit of exercise.  I know you might think that 15 minutes is laughable, and it is, but considering I do next to NO exercise, I've been embarrassingly sore after even 15 minutes!  I am hoping that this small thing will give me more energy for my day, and hopefully make me more inclined to be up and about with the kids instead of watching from my comfy seat while they play.

My final step will be to be more diligent about our daily routine.  I have three activities that should happen during the day that are hit-and-miss.  Usually I attend to at least one, but I really need to get to all three.  I know that part of the reason that they have not been happening with regularity is that while I have so few children, yet must still pay my assistant to be here, I have been taking the time that she is here to retreat into my own space and do other things.  However, if left on her own, I know that she is NOT inclined to do the routine things I feel are important.  If they are to be done, I must do them.

Hopefully, by being more intentional with my daily routine, fewer things will be left on the back burner, and I will feel more accomplished and successful by actually doing the things that I know need to be done.  Hopefully, feeling more accomplished will translate into a better outlook, optimism, and ambition, which will translate to a happier me, and good karma!

Living Life...

It always amuses me when I hear someone blaming their childhood for how their life turned out. Life is a choice. You can choose to live or you can choose to just exist.

I get that you may have had the cards stacked against you. Your parents may have been losers, or you may not have had parents at all. You may have been surrounded all your life with people who were just existing, and you may think that's all that's possible for you. That's your choice. You can't blame your parents for that.

Living is hard. No one ever said it was easy. Some people just don't have the knack, if you know what I mean. They are the ones that see the glass half empty, that think everyone's out to get them, that the government owes them something. You can't help those people. They are so far removed from living they don't know that what they are doing isn't it.

Then there are those lucky ones that just get it, and don't even have to try. They are the ones that go through life exuberant, loving every moment, and taking advantage of every opportunity with abandon. They just know they are alive, and you can't help but watch them move through it with stark adoration, or you just want to shoot them for making it look so easy.

And then there's the rest of us. We know the choice exists, but it's a choice we have to make every day. In the middle of washing dishes, mowing the lawn, cleaning out the garage, we have to consciously stop whining and thank our lucky stars that we have dishes, a lawn, a garage. No, thanking isn't the right word. We ENJOY the fact that we have those things.

But more importantly, when an opportunity shows up that we actually recognize, in the moment, as an opportunity, we're the ones that have to consider the wisdom of pursuing it. Instead of jumping in with both feet as would the natural-born livers, we weigh the odds, discuss the pros and cons, and tentatively stick our toe in. About half of the time, we manage to step through that proverbial window in time. For the most part though, the window gets slammed shut with our toe still in it.

That's the rest of us. Cautiously living. Squinting into the sunlight.