Frustration

The idea of career and pas­sion has been on my mind since I can remem­ber think­ing about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was told at an early age that I could be any­thing I wanted, and to fol­low my dreams. As I got older, my dreams did not divert from the male-dominated fields that they always were in, and sud­denly adults wanted to tell me I couldn’t really do what­ever I wanted, that’s just some­thing that peo­ple say so that kids will aim high. I had appar­ently aimed too high for many people’s com­fort, and was encour­aged to lower my bar a bit.

I took that encour­age­ment a bit too much to heart, or per­haps I didn’t really give it much heed until I met Chris. Either way, my plans changed greatly some­where late in high school and early in col­lege and I decided my pas­sion would be bet­ter served pur­su­ing a fam­ily than a career. I know now that this isn’t an either/or propo­si­tion, but my young fool­ish self had seen one too many fam­i­lies who were neglected for a career. My par­ents’ mar­riage was founder­ing, and I blamed behav­ior that I saw as glo­ri­fy­ing money over rela­tion­ships. Age brings wis­dom, and I real­ize now that it was more com­pli­cated than that. And of course, the choice isn’t between the two, but how to prop­erly bal­ance the two.

I still am not con­vinced that everyone’s dream job is what they need to pursue. “Following your pas­sion” isn’t as clear as guid­ance coun­sel­lors would have you think.  For some peo­ple, a job is just a means to a pay­check, so that they can spend their time with their true pas­sion. I don’t think there is any­thing wrong with con­tin­u­ing in a career that’s only “good enough” if it pro­vides the chance to live in your dream town. It all depends on where the pas­sion really lies.

There are peo­ple who can pur­sue mul­ti­ple paths in a life’s span. As an adult, my pas­sion has been devoted to my fam­ily until now. I’ve set aside per­sonal dreams, but they were strong and would not be denied for­ever. The last five years I’ve been weigh­ing any deci­sion care­fully, but I’ve decided to resume those per­sonal goals. I don’t really dig being at home, domes­tic god­dess though I may be. I’m eas­ily bored, and even more resent­ful if I feel that I’m being held from my true potential.

The bal­ance of what is truly my pas­sion is weigh­ing on my mind lately, as I’m hav­ing trou­ble with mak­ing ends meet despite pinch­ing pen­nies hard enough that Lin­coln cusses me out.   I know that being a well rounded, fully real­ized woman will pro­vide my chil­dren with an excel­lent exam­ple of some­one who did not com­pro­mise her beliefs or val­ues for any­one. I know I’m going to screw up along the way, and they’re not going to get every lit­tle thing I wish I could give them.

I wish I could wig­gle the answer out as to how to be inor­di­nately wealthy and simul­ta­ne­ously have beau­coups of free time already! I think it really comes down to need­ing to sleep about 5 hours less any given night. Any­one who has seen me on 6 hours of sleep or less will agree that this is not in anyone’s best interest. I know that peo­ple the world over have this issue, and par­tic­u­larly women. I’ve really only scratched the surface. I could real­is­ti­cally make the whole blog about this and have fod­der for writ­ing for ages.

As if to illus­trate my point, my old­est just tried to dia­gram the way taste­buds really work and I grumped at him because “you see Mama is typ­ing.”  So I guess I ought to go on to the next thing.