Concerns of an aging female
I just finished Mindy Kaling's book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) and am pretty much convinced we were born of the same embryo but somehow got separated at birth, but something tells me that our varied ethnic backgrounds might ground that rumor. Still, though, I feel like she is my slightly more ambitious non-romantic soulmate. Everything about her book seemed like it was about me, from her love of comedy, to being a writer, to her exaggerated opinion of her own writing and the inability to take criticism (overstepping my boundaries at work used to be a mainstay of mine) to her love of karaoke and having nothing but dance music on her iPod ... well ... anyway, I don't want to brag forever but if we ever meet and there is alcohol involved, I am definitely hugging her in a non-creepy (but totally creepy) way.
As it happens when I read a book I really connect to, I then tend to go into super introspective mode which is nothing but self-destructive. I decided rather than keep myself up all night thinking about things I want to write about, I'd just come on here and write about some stuff.
So, in no particular order, here are a list of some concerns that immediately ran through my mind upon completion of this book:
1) I do not spend enough time doing writing, of any sort, and certainly not of the creative and original sort.
I have gone through periods of my life where I considered myself a fairly prolific writer, not only writing letters and original stories, but pre-internet fan-fictions involving my friends and real-life people who would probably kill me if they knew the goofy situations I had put them through. Not to go too terribly off-topic, but I will give some major props to my high school friends, most of whom I still keep in touch with, who had an amazing amount of patience and even interest in what I was writing. I appreciate your support, even if you were just humoring me.
That being said, I have always felt like writing has carried me along in my life and was something that I was always semi-decent at. The problem is that I have always known a good number of people in real life who could blow me away talent-wise, and still did not manage to make a living out of writing, so I always figured that if they weren't doing it, I probably wasn't gonna make it, either. Also, my general laziness and/or lack of ambition and/or lack of follow-through does not help whatsoever. I almost wish I was back in school again with a deadline looming over my head or had a disappointed authority figure motivating me to work harder. To put it simply, I love being without boundaries but it's a creative black hole for me.
2) I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with my life.
When I was going through some of my tougher times, emotionally, Wes used to tell me that part of my problem was my lack of direction in life; that I hadn't really figured out what I wanted to do with myself, and if I could do that, I'd probably feel a lot more fulfilled and motivated and less depressed. I agree with this theory, but the problem is that it's already been about ten years since I've graduated college and I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Not only that, but I wonder if the time to make the prime choice has already alluded me, like writing a script or a witty book of essays. I'm nearing my mid-early-thirties, I am a mother now, so I'm sort of feeling like -- Is this it? Is this the choice I've made? To be a mom and feel thrilled when I've managed to clean the entire house in an afternoon?
My only problem is that the only time I'm really motivated to do what I should be doing as a housewife is when I'm entertaining and therefore, feel obligated to actually clean (rather than straighten up and call it "cleaning.") As a result, I concocted a last minute party under the guise making tacos for friends when really it was probably an elaborate excuse to get myself to clean the house. To be fair, I felt very accomplished right before and during the party, but afterwards, in the awful haze of the morning, I looked at the sink full of dishes with contempt and wondered, "Why?"
3) Being married for more than ten years is like riding a bike with no hands.
On one hand, you feel like you've been at it for so long, you just want to show off. "Look at me, look at how easy it is." But then suddenly you hit a bump in the road and start veering wildly off in another direction, almost ready to crash before your hands quickly grab the handlebars and you stabilize again. We just celebrated our 11th anniversary. For our anniversary, we went out to dinner and to see a classic rock cover band with a couple work customers of my husband's. This would not necessarily sound romantic to most people, but my husband and I always connected very closely under the guise of work because we worked together in the same office for almost six years. It was a wonderful evening, and I really feel closer to him than I have in a while.
On the other hand, our general day-to-day interactions involve this: 1) him kissing my half-asleep self, closed-mouth so he doesn't have to taste my horrible breath as he leaves for work, 2) a quick hug when he gets home from work, 3) me begging him to come up to eat dinner with us, 4) him begging me to watch a movie or some TV with him, 5) him telling me he's going to sleep while I stay up for eleventy more hours and hate myself in the morning.
I like to think that he is more selfish than I am, but I honestly think the opposite is true. He claims he's constantly begging me to do things with him, and I know that's true, but I generally refuse or claim to be busy elsewhere because they're things that I'm not always interested in, like watching bad movies, or sitting out in the garage. Even if it is something we like, I somehow can't find myself bothered to do it because I'd rather look at Hunger Games pictures on Tumblr. And then I wonder what's wrong with us? The ridiculous thing is that I realize that when we do hang out, it's fun but I am almost always begrudging about it and I don't really know why. Tonight we watched this 1986 Charlie Sheen movie (also with a gorgeously well-endowed Sherliyn Fenn!) called The Wraith. It was so full of awful over-acting and ridiculousness, I enjoyed it immensely! Especially Clint Howard in his turn as Thomas Dolby's chubbier and more afro-ed brother. Why he practically had to beg me to come watch it, I don't know. Well, I do know ---- I was in the middle of reading Mindy Kaling's book and didn't want to put it down. (Instead I got back up to read it after he went to sleep.)
I realize that marriage and relationships are about give and take and you're not always going to like the same stuff all the time, and that, also, once you add kids into the mix, it changes the dynamic completely. But I also feel like us not working together anymore took out a lot of our major daily interactions and conversational topic. We still talk about work stuff, but not as much, and I can't help but feel a little left out because I'm not a part of that mix anymore. On the other hand, it's easy to forget how much tension being together that much brought into our relationship. I guess we've traded one thing for another.
I don't mean to paint a picture in that we are only sometimes happy, because I don't think that's true. I do believe that we are mostly happy but also both fairly lazy and tend to fall too easily back on our comfort zones and then feel hurt when the other doesn't want to hang out with us on our terms. I guess maybe it would be neat to find something we'd both enjoy doing together on a regular basis... [insert sex joke here, because I was about two seconds away from making it.]
===
I know there were some other points here, but I had to get up and clean up some more puke from my kid. I am a little clueless because he was throwing up late last night (around 12:30 p.m., just as my guests were getting ready to leave, puke littered the stairs and the hallway), then again at 1, 2:30 and 3:30 a.m., the third and fourth time in my room, in a bowl, because he wanted to sleep with me. Then again very early around 5:30 or so when he decided to get up. The rest of the day went without event, but then, just about 10 minutes ago, it happened again. I guess he's still sick? He hasn't been running a fever as far as I can tell, so who knows? I guess it's another lazy day around here tomorrow.
I'm going to have to do some Kinect in order to make up for a lack of gym workouts.
Phew. Feeling kind of tired now after that. Something about dealing with a sick kid all night that really ruins your next day. Especially if you were drinking. Yeah, and about that: I need to drink less because i feel like it's ruining my waistline. I have expontientally increased my weight over the last couple years, due to what I'm pretty sure are these three factors: 1) major increase in inactivity due to depression and anxiety, 2) increase in casual alcohol consumption also due to said factors, and 3) my departure from yoga, which I'm pretty sure helped all around and I desperately need to reintroduce to my life!
Yeah, sleep should happen in case I am woken up again in another hour. Blah.
As it happens when I read a book I really connect to, I then tend to go into super introspective mode which is nothing but self-destructive. I decided rather than keep myself up all night thinking about things I want to write about, I'd just come on here and write about some stuff.
So, in no particular order, here are a list of some concerns that immediately ran through my mind upon completion of this book:
1) I do not spend enough time doing writing, of any sort, and certainly not of the creative and original sort.
I have gone through periods of my life where I considered myself a fairly prolific writer, not only writing letters and original stories, but pre-internet fan-fictions involving my friends and real-life people who would probably kill me if they knew the goofy situations I had put them through. Not to go too terribly off-topic, but I will give some major props to my high school friends, most of whom I still keep in touch with, who had an amazing amount of patience and even interest in what I was writing. I appreciate your support, even if you were just humoring me.
That being said, I have always felt like writing has carried me along in my life and was something that I was always semi-decent at. The problem is that I have always known a good number of people in real life who could blow me away talent-wise, and still did not manage to make a living out of writing, so I always figured that if they weren't doing it, I probably wasn't gonna make it, either. Also, my general laziness and/or lack of ambition and/or lack of follow-through does not help whatsoever. I almost wish I was back in school again with a deadline looming over my head or had a disappointed authority figure motivating me to work harder. To put it simply, I love being without boundaries but it's a creative black hole for me.
2) I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with my life.
When I was going through some of my tougher times, emotionally, Wes used to tell me that part of my problem was my lack of direction in life; that I hadn't really figured out what I wanted to do with myself, and if I could do that, I'd probably feel a lot more fulfilled and motivated and less depressed. I agree with this theory, but the problem is that it's already been about ten years since I've graduated college and I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Not only that, but I wonder if the time to make the prime choice has already alluded me, like writing a script or a witty book of essays. I'm nearing my mid-early-thirties, I am a mother now, so I'm sort of feeling like -- Is this it? Is this the choice I've made? To be a mom and feel thrilled when I've managed to clean the entire house in an afternoon?
My only problem is that the only time I'm really motivated to do what I should be doing as a housewife is when I'm entertaining and therefore, feel obligated to actually clean (rather than straighten up and call it "cleaning.") As a result, I concocted a last minute party under the guise making tacos for friends when really it was probably an elaborate excuse to get myself to clean the house. To be fair, I felt very accomplished right before and during the party, but afterwards, in the awful haze of the morning, I looked at the sink full of dishes with contempt and wondered, "Why?"
3) Being married for more than ten years is like riding a bike with no hands.
On one hand, you feel like you've been at it for so long, you just want to show off. "Look at me, look at how easy it is." But then suddenly you hit a bump in the road and start veering wildly off in another direction, almost ready to crash before your hands quickly grab the handlebars and you stabilize again. We just celebrated our 11th anniversary. For our anniversary, we went out to dinner and to see a classic rock cover band with a couple work customers of my husband's. This would not necessarily sound romantic to most people, but my husband and I always connected very closely under the guise of work because we worked together in the same office for almost six years. It was a wonderful evening, and I really feel closer to him than I have in a while.
On the other hand, our general day-to-day interactions involve this: 1) him kissing my half-asleep self, closed-mouth so he doesn't have to taste my horrible breath as he leaves for work, 2) a quick hug when he gets home from work, 3) me begging him to come up to eat dinner with us, 4) him begging me to watch a movie or some TV with him, 5) him telling me he's going to sleep while I stay up for eleventy more hours and hate myself in the morning.
I like to think that he is more selfish than I am, but I honestly think the opposite is true. He claims he's constantly begging me to do things with him, and I know that's true, but I generally refuse or claim to be busy elsewhere because they're things that I'm not always interested in, like watching bad movies, or sitting out in the garage. Even if it is something we like, I somehow can't find myself bothered to do it because I'd rather look at Hunger Games pictures on Tumblr. And then I wonder what's wrong with us? The ridiculous thing is that I realize that when we do hang out, it's fun but I am almost always begrudging about it and I don't really know why. Tonight we watched this 1986 Charlie Sheen movie (also with a gorgeously well-endowed Sherliyn Fenn!) called The Wraith. It was so full of awful over-acting and ridiculousness, I enjoyed it immensely! Especially Clint Howard in his turn as Thomas Dolby's chubbier and more afro-ed brother. Why he practically had to beg me to come watch it, I don't know. Well, I do know ---- I was in the middle of reading Mindy Kaling's book and didn't want to put it down. (Instead I got back up to read it after he went to sleep.)
I realize that marriage and relationships are about give and take and you're not always going to like the same stuff all the time, and that, also, once you add kids into the mix, it changes the dynamic completely. But I also feel like us not working together anymore took out a lot of our major daily interactions and conversational topic. We still talk about work stuff, but not as much, and I can't help but feel a little left out because I'm not a part of that mix anymore. On the other hand, it's easy to forget how much tension being together that much brought into our relationship. I guess we've traded one thing for another.
I don't mean to paint a picture in that we are only sometimes happy, because I don't think that's true. I do believe that we are mostly happy but also both fairly lazy and tend to fall too easily back on our comfort zones and then feel hurt when the other doesn't want to hang out with us on our terms. I guess maybe it would be neat to find something we'd both enjoy doing together on a regular basis... [insert sex joke here, because I was about two seconds away from making it.]
===
I know there were some other points here, but I had to get up and clean up some more puke from my kid. I am a little clueless because he was throwing up late last night (around 12:30 p.m., just as my guests were getting ready to leave, puke littered the stairs and the hallway), then again at 1, 2:30 and 3:30 a.m., the third and fourth time in my room, in a bowl, because he wanted to sleep with me. Then again very early around 5:30 or so when he decided to get up. The rest of the day went without event, but then, just about 10 minutes ago, it happened again. I guess he's still sick? He hasn't been running a fever as far as I can tell, so who knows? I guess it's another lazy day around here tomorrow.
I'm going to have to do some Kinect in order to make up for a lack of gym workouts.
Phew. Feeling kind of tired now after that. Something about dealing with a sick kid all night that really ruins your next day. Especially if you were drinking. Yeah, and about that: I need to drink less because i feel like it's ruining my waistline. I have expontientally increased my weight over the last couple years, due to what I'm pretty sure are these three factors: 1) major increase in inactivity due to depression and anxiety, 2) increase in casual alcohol consumption also due to said factors, and 3) my departure from yoga, which I'm pretty sure helped all around and I desperately need to reintroduce to my life!
Yeah, sleep should happen in case I am woken up again in another hour. Blah.