I say this a lot. Time seems to be flying. I try to pay attention, to savor moments of each and every day. Good things happen. Simple things that make me so grateful to be here, to be me, to be.
I am still trying to decide what's next in my life. My mind is captivated with creativity on a daily basis. I am taking another class at Big Picture right now, Telling Stories Deeply. I am working on typing scenes of a novel I finally started writing so I can get a clearer picture of what needs to be changed and perfected and what I still need to write.
It feels like crawling.
There are things I want to accomplish. Our home is currently in complete disarray with the process of organization. We are getting there, but cold and rainy weather have tied our hands a little bit. People will not go out in 30 degrees or in the rain to shop garage sales, and much of the clutter in our house is going to be (hopefully) eliminated when the weather warms up enough to draw crowds of folks hungry for a bargain.
Thoughts of going to school in the fall and thoughts of starting a scrapbooking blog and thoughts of a new novel to write and thoughts of how to make this blog better are filling my head as I go about my day. I don't feel stuck. Which is good, but I do feel like I'm revving my internal engines without a clear direction to go just yet.
Like Ursula the Sea Witch declares in Disney's The Little Mermaid, "life is full of tough choices, isn't it?"
Because I finally joined Facebook awhile back and looked up old friends on the friend finding tool, I started thinking about high school, my classmates, people I haven't seen in--oh, let's just say it--TWENTY THREE years. That is a long time. I've been thinking about how much I have changed. I started thinking about this one guy in my class and all the things I'd have to tell him to catch him up on my life since we departed the hallowed halls of Chapel Hill High School over two decades ago. The list is long; would it make a good memoir? He didn't reply to my message on Facebook, which was a mild disappointment. I didn't really expect us to reconnect. Life changes people, and high school becomes less and less significant to most of us the more time goes by.
But the thing that got my attention is just how much I have changed since then. I am the same girl in some ways, but all grown up, and my life didn't go anywhere near the direction I expected. In some ways, I'm totally disappointed that I am not yet more of the success my classmates collectively expected of me when they voted me "Most Likely to Succeed." I'm disappointed that, at forty-going-on-forty-one, I still feel adrift.
At the same time, the things that make me unhappy on any given day have more to do with things I can't control than the things I can. Overall, my life is good. I have a rich life full of joy and connection and creativity. What's missing? Is it missing because I really, really want it? Or does it feel like it's missing because of what 169 people thought of me way back in the mid 1980's?
That is the question, I guess.
We all live with expectations of ourselves. From our minds, from the minds of others. I've gotten pretty good at boiling down my feelings about me to what I really think and not letting myself be tossed about by what everyone else wants of me. But I still need to answer the question, what do I want for myself?
And that is the real question. The most important question. And I'm going to keep asking it, keep considering it, until I get an answer that leads me in some direction, even if I wind up wandering.
As long as I don't feel lost.
Copyright 2009 Melissa LaFavers