Okay. So, right as The August Break was starting, I had a little breakdown myself…well, of my ego at least. One night, as I was rocking the baby to sleep and mulling over ideas for posts, I started thinking about the concept of “drive” – that insatiable urge to get stuff done that some people just seem to have. You can call it a Type A Personality, you can call it ambition, you can call it Maurice for all that it matters. The end result is that these people – no matter what their level of talent or their inherent “luck” genes – well, they get stuff DONE. They are “somebody*s” in their respective fields.
Track 5 – “You Can Sleep While I Drive”. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I started thinking about all of the people I know who fall into this category – whether they are in the arts, the business community, or both – and quite honestly, it left me feeling somewhat like a failure. I mean, yes, I have wonderful family and friends, a lovely home and garden, and I’ve done some pretty cool stuff in my time, if I do say so – and I am grateful for these things, truly. But. Many-many things on my bucket list have fallen by the wayside. I am nowhere near the person that I thought I would be by this time (not that envisioning “future me*s” has ever been an easy task, but I had some ideas), and it got me wondering why.
Well, I’ve outgrown some of them – like trying snowboarding and having a darkroom, for example. It’s not that I couldn’t do these things, but the person I am now really has no interest in pursuing them, and I am okay with just letting them go. Some of them are definitely “sacrifices” – things that I have to let go of because I am part of a family now, and they don’t fit in with our “team vision”. No, wait. I choose to let them go, because my family is far more important to me than driving around in a VW Van or living in a loft are. And who knows, when the boys are grown and if these are still things I am interested in, then there may still be time to achieve them. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Me “dream” loft – designed and constructed with balsa wood by me (the upper “bed and bath” level have been removed) circa 1992.
Which leaves the rest…which just haven’t happened. Moving to the coast, vacationing in Italy, going to “art school”, and so on. Not that these can’t happen, but the clock is seriously ticking, and life always seems to get in the way. Much of the time, it feels like whenever I do make a plan, “the universe” steps in and sets me on a different path entirely. And though I have happened upon a great many amazingly wonderful things this way – I am “married with kids” for goodness sake, which was totally NOT part of the plan – I fear I am simply just not driven enough to achieve some of the crazy dreams that I dream.
Now, on the day of my little meltdown, the fatalist in me was thinking “Why bother dreaming at all then, if I am just going to get rerouted anyhow? And seriously, what kind of character flaw do I possess when I’m afraid to even dream, or ask for help achieving the things I truly want? Why is it that I feel so unworthy of, well, pretty much everything I can think of right now?” Cue the tears. (Even now, as I am writing in retrospect, I am getting a little verklempt…what’s up with that?) Thank goodness that my amazing husband stepped in at this point and talked some sense into me. If there’s one thing I truly love about our relationship is that we take turns being the “sane” one.
My amazingly wonderful boys – I am a lucky lady, indeed.
As mothers (and maybe even as women, period), oftentimes we get so wrapped up in nurturing others that we forget about ourselves. Part of why I started this blog in the first place was to gently remind myself to make time for myself and my creativity every day. I am trying to think of my mini-crisis as a reminder that I just need to start working on the “where I want to end up” part now. Looking at all of the other wonderful blogs out there has been both a blessing and a curse for this. It is so easy to hold ourselves up to the “successful” people out there and chastise ourselves for not being one of them instead of being inspired by their greatness to also do great things. I guess you just have to remember that everyone has to start somewhere. And with that, I am going to spend nap time today doing a little dreaming.
