For years now, quite possibly since the day I abandoned my pre-college dreams of a successful career in communications, I have felt like the part of me that yearns to communicate was operating exactly like a person going through life, attempting to function in everyday tasks such as showering, making coffee, driving, etc. with a blanket over their head and shoulders. It's weird.
Oddly enough, I was the one who wanted to stay home with my kids. Where my feet could never find stable purchase was the gray area between all and nothing (no career and workaholic). I could not master this. I would never go back and not be here with them. I would make that choice again and again and again. I have enjoyed their milestones and loved being there for them in every season. I have feasted on that. Still do.
What happens, though, when you yearn and yearn and yearn to express to the world who YOU are as an individual, but yet find no outlet for this expression? What do you turn to? In my case, a world of addictions to food, hobbies and internet research. I glutted myself on all of the above. I made myself really sick of them. I'm getting old for this kind of reflection. And yet, here I am, reflecting.
I don't think a crazily successful career would have stilled the longing to express. I think it would have felt like an empty soda can. I would have been pulling at the straw, sucking air, in the first year I bet. Choking on the competition, which would have killed a soul like mine, a soul that likes to connect with others rather than alienate them.
I'm a complicated person. Those who know me best are still confounded by me. That's okay. I'm still becoming who I hope to be. Sometimes I feel the best parts of me are still tucked under that blanket, still blindly doing what everyone else does while eagerly longing to do something of more consequence while at the same time really enjoying the mundane mundaneness (my word) of domestic life, of its predictability and its sureness of bringing me into constant contact with my husband and children, who I adore. This post may be rife with grammatical horrors, owing to my propensity to eschew works of higher reasoning and hug a feel-good novel. Or two. Or thirty.
Hey, what would happen if I wrote a book? A story that someone out there connected with on some level? I've begun one before. Someone gave me a lukewarm review and I abandoned the pursuit the way a runner abandons a race once an ankle gives way. I've exhorted my readers (waves to my handful of close friends and family) to find a passion. Mine has always been words! They are my clay. Time to pull them out of their dusty drawers and toss them around. When they are sucked into the wheel of my imagination, who know what will emerge. Might be garbage. Might be magic.Who knows?
Oddly enough, I was the one who wanted to stay home with my kids. Where my feet could never find stable purchase was the gray area between all and nothing (no career and workaholic). I could not master this. I would never go back and not be here with them. I would make that choice again and again and again. I have enjoyed their milestones and loved being there for them in every season. I have feasted on that. Still do.
What happens, though, when you yearn and yearn and yearn to express to the world who YOU are as an individual, but yet find no outlet for this expression? What do you turn to? In my case, a world of addictions to food, hobbies and internet research. I glutted myself on all of the above. I made myself really sick of them. I'm getting old for this kind of reflection. And yet, here I am, reflecting.
I don't think a crazily successful career would have stilled the longing to express. I think it would have felt like an empty soda can. I would have been pulling at the straw, sucking air, in the first year I bet. Choking on the competition, which would have killed a soul like mine, a soul that likes to connect with others rather than alienate them.
I'm a complicated person. Those who know me best are still confounded by me. That's okay. I'm still becoming who I hope to be. Sometimes I feel the best parts of me are still tucked under that blanket, still blindly doing what everyone else does while eagerly longing to do something of more consequence while at the same time really enjoying the mundane mundaneness (my word) of domestic life, of its predictability and its sureness of bringing me into constant contact with my husband and children, who I adore. This post may be rife with grammatical horrors, owing to my propensity to eschew works of higher reasoning and hug a feel-good novel. Or two. Or thirty.
Hey, what would happen if I wrote a book? A story that someone out there connected with on some level? I've begun one before. Someone gave me a lukewarm review and I abandoned the pursuit the way a runner abandons a race once an ankle gives way. I've exhorted my readers (waves to my handful of close friends and family) to find a passion. Mine has always been words! They are my clay. Time to pull them out of their dusty drawers and toss them around. When they are sucked into the wheel of my imagination, who know what will emerge. Might be garbage. Might be magic.Who knows?
