Is that what they call it when you sit around and think about yourself a lot?
I posted recently that I have been trying to figure out what the second half of my life is supposed to be like, and at the time I had some answers. But then something happened that make me realize that ridiculous list of things I want to do are things that I can't just do all at once, simultaneously - and that the list is rather arbitrary. I just don't know. I also realized that my anxiety about the future is complicated by the fact that I am 38. The kind of directionless, strange, unmoored, financially ruined, romantically unattached, career indifference is the stuff that is supposed to trouble people who are, say, 25 or even 30. By 38, peoples lives are supposed to be defined already. I can't even have a proper mid life crisis because all my LOOK AT MY BELLY BUTTON! is about shit that any normal person would have figured out already.
A proper mid-life crisis is supposed to be about trying to change your life - shirking your marital obligations, indulging in wild spending sprees, committing ill-advised wardrobe crimes, glaring.. woefully and with great disappointment at your offspring who turned into exactly the people you hoped they wouldn't - in short more like you than you had hoped.
Instead I have before me... nothing.. Just a whole lot of blankness and lack of any proper instinct as to what should happen next. It's rather like standing at the piano and not knowing how to play. Or if I did, what would be the song?
So if you don't hear from me, blog wise,* for a few days, be assured I am just fine. Alive. Breathing. Eating cheese. It just so happens that short of simply staying alive, I have no idea what to do, and that will often mean that I don't know what to say.
*be assured also that if anything amusing happens - say if I smack anyone in the face with my boob by accident - or trip and fall at the train station and bruise my knees - in short, if I have a story to tell that might amuse anyone, you will have it. Promise.
7 comments:
First of all anyone has a right to question their life and where it is going at any age. I do this often and I am 52. What I have learned at this ripe old age is that it is all bullshit. Those that seem to have it together at a young age are most likely going through the motions. Relax Nina, take it one minute at a time and try more than anything to enjoy your life. XOXO
What Annie said.
Seriously - I hope no one expects me to have everything figured out - at any age. That is WAY too hard to live up to!
Embrace the fact, too, that you don't have anyone holding you back from doing anything right now.
The grass is always greener, you know?
:D
You're my kinda normal. Also, I think your belly button is darling. Remember the old 'quit comparing yourself to others' lesson? There's no real good in wishing for life's usual. People like us are the spice of life. Paths other than the norm are interesting. The poetry in them is closer to the surface. The times you've characterized yourself as 'ordinary' I've thought, what the hell is she thinking?
"All is as it should be", the Buddhists say. That's including you, as you are, in the act of visiting and revisiting where you are and where you're going, being not ordinary, being unique in your path and circumstances.
The age milestone thing is crap anyway; so many of the folks who are right on mark in the 'usual' world are saddled with crap they'd give anything to be rid of (stress, commitments they can't stand anymore but are still obliged to, etc.) and pondering how to cope, whether to start over from square one, wishing to God that what they had was just two feet and a piano.
I have nothing to say except this: I haven't drawn the winning name yet, but if you win the trip to Orlando, would you be able to come?
Have you considered that you are right where you're supposed to be?
Imagine what chaos might be afoot in your wonderfully ordered life after all that has happened. Maybe better that you were adrift so you could roll with the waves.
You have the freedom to do anything you want to do. That's a whole huge not nothingness right there.
Welcome to life. Congratulations, you're normal.
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