It's Time

You’re right; I changed the look of things around here.  I’m looking for change these days and hoping for improvement. 

The whole idea of ‘change’ started a few weeks ago when I quit smoking.  Unfortunately that’s where it stopped, until now, with the change in my blog.  You didn’t know I started smoking, did you?  Well now you know I stopped too.  I thought if I change some external things, than the internal changes would happen too.  Like happiness.   

Potential Master’s degree aside, the question that lingered before I ever applied for my graduate program still resides: what am I going to do with my life?  It’s unsetting.  Quit you’re bitching, you’re thinking.  And you’re right.  I already know people would kill to have the education I’ve been given.  I already know that I’m lucky to soon have the credentials that I’ll have but that doesn’t necessarily make a person happy.  Does it?  So perhaps the better question is: what am I doing to make myself happy?  I think this is the question that we all live to answer.  Happiness is the bones of life, the driving force, the reason, the meaning.  We search for happiness when we marry, have kids, own homes, pets, boats, cars, T.V.’s, luggage, and in my case seek more school.  But those things don't make us happy.  My schooling, as appreciative as I am to it, doesn't make me happy.  

What makes me happy is in between the lines of mommyhood and career.   It’s this, right here; pushing white buttons, deleting, reading, rewriting, highlighting, deleting again, copying, pasting, cursing, thinking, reading, rewording, cursing, paraphrasing, pushing more white buttons, and deleting again. 

The irony of this entire post is that I started this entry on a piece of notebook paper in the middle of a lecture at school titled, “Issues in Research Design.”  I love research and I live and breath school but if it made me happy I wouldn't be furiously scribbling and scratching and bypassing everything that is being taught in this three hour class for the simple joy of writing.  Being a counselor seems to fit like my favorite pair of Rockstar skinny jeans from Old Navy.  But it's not the jeans that make me happy, it’s the boots I wear with them.

Broke down more simply: maybe if I wasn’t spread so thin, I’d be happier.  Maybe if the lecture wasn’t so boring, I’d be happier.  Maybe if I wasn’t done with this program in December and worried about having to be an adult, I’d be happier.  Ironic, isn’t it, that life can throw me a child (the most beautiful child I never dreamt up in my wildest mommy dreams) but when it comes to the rest of life I feel entirely inadequate, unprepared, and unready. 

So I'm going to write, instead of worry. 

I thought I’d change my blog and hope to spend more time pushing these buttons and deleting and cursing.  I used to write “biannually,” I say, about subjects like my dead mom and dad and struggling brother.  But I’m making changes and starting fresh.  I’m going to start living in between the lines; write more.  About less morbid things.  Because it makes me happy and it’s a good start. 

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So far, not so good a start.

I know you know how hard it is to make changes.  I know you know. 

I wrote this post a couple weeks ago, typed it a week ago and it’s been blinking “post me!” all over my computer screen ever since.  The problem is, if I post it, it means I have to start making some changes.  It means I have to stop saying I will and actually do it.  It means less time for reading, more time for writing. So here goes holding myself accountable, throwing caution to the wind (whatever that means) and finding happiness therein.  And maybe a good pair of boots too.