My husband is one of those people who always seemed to have a plan and to know who he was and where he was going. He saw himself as an adult with house, wife, and kids one day...he saw himself as generally successful. He also never remembers his dreams and has no idea if he dreams in color or black and white, so I'm pretty sure he is kinda weird, anyway. I can't imagine what it must be like to become the person you thought you would be.
Is it wisdom, or lack of imagination? Is it validating to look back and say "Yeah, this is who I thought I was" or do you regret not taking the side paths, even if they caused you to lag behind in your life's journey? He seems happy, and he seems to feel as though he has succeeded in life. I, myself, find that I am happy...but not so sure about successful. I mean, I know I want to always be moving forward, and I don't want to become stagnant, but at the same time, when one feels successful, do you suddenly feel as though you have "arrived" and everything else is icing?
Honestly, I have had to seriously question where I belong, and if I am missing something. Life is so short and I want to squeeze everything joyful and thought provoking out of it. I want to mainline information and ideas directly into my veins in a constant stream of consciousness. I want to feel it, see it, experience it, becore I run out of days to do it in. I want to be happy, competent, successful in my own mind, regardless of what anyone else thinks.
Don't you have to know what "successful" means to you, personally, to accomplish this? I want to be a well loved mother, a lucrative entrepreneur, and wife that my husband is proud of...and I want to look amazing and be inspiring to others while doing it! Do I have too many criteria, do I expect too much or myself? Or am I limiting myself and stunting my potential abilities by accepting less? They say not to expect too much...but why not? So I don't get disappointed? But maybe what I receive correlates to what I expect and I am holding myself back. I wonder if those who have achieved greatness expected more than what I have expected in the past?
That is my new challenge. Expect more! Of myself, of my family, of my life! And if I don't get more from it, perhaps I should think about what I can do to change that. I think many of us don't think of ourselves in terms of "greatness"...thats for "other" people...famous people, rich people, lucky people. But why? We were all given the same number of hours each day, and while some of us may have started out a handicapped (physically, emotionally, fiscally, whatever), maybe ALL of us receive a handicap and those that win are those that overcome and see their own greatness and quit comparing themselves to others.
“The same wind blows on us all; the winds of disaster, opportunity and change. The same wind blows on us all. Therefore, it is not the blowing of the wind, but the setting of the sails that will determine our direction in life.”
~Jim Rohn
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
So it begins....
I have threatened to start a blog many times. My kids say or do something hysterical, and I think "I should be writing this stuff down!", or maybe I just want to vent or think, and the quiet in my head is not near as satisfactory as the clicking of the keyboard.
But mostly, I feel the urge when I look at my life, and think, "WOW...how did I get here?". "Here" is not normally a bad place...actually, it can often be the most wonderful, glorious place I have ever been, but it is normally somewhere that I never would have dreamed that I would ever be.
Once upon a time I pictured myself as an adult, with tattoos and body piercing, owning some sort of questionable pet like a pit bull or an anaconda, working a deliciously questionable job, like my owning my own tattoo parlor or something exciting, like an undercover cop, working both sides of the law, just like you would see on A&E. Then I married my first husband and sobered up. Oh, if only I had done the latter first! Then my first child came, the inevitable divorce, and then a decade of self discovery and, hopefully, improvement.
So back to the blog. I almost started on a couple years ago when I realize how funny and clever my children were..I don't ever want to forget! Then a second urge came when I started my own Arbonne business...I wanted to be able to store product reviews and maybe help others in their own business endeavors. But the final straw came when I bought the minivan.
Yes, the minivan. I actually received condolences from some of my friends. It was my grand admission to parenthood, adulthood, and responsibility...and one item I swore I would never own, right next to Mom Jeans and those little stickers people have in their car windows denoting their kids, which I have always wondered might be serial killer fodder...I mean, if there's some nut ball running around who likes to kill families of 5, why should I advertise?
But I digress. I now own my first minivan. And something happened. I didn't suddenly gain 15 pounds and start asking my children if they were wearing clean underwear. I did, however, pop in Violent Femmes, and transported all three children, a husband, and several dishes to my mother's house for Easter dinner. And the eldest didn't even have to climb over the top of the middle child to get to the back row and my husband didn't have to hold the cake in the passenger seat. That's when it truly, for the first time in my life, occurred to me that maybe, just maybe I could have it all. I could still be me and be wife and mom without compromise or having to give up pieces of myself. Maybe compromise didn't mean loss, but a mutualistic symbiosis. And I suddenly felt like a minivan crusader, the Masked Mom, who could Be and Do it all.
So I sit at the keyboard, thinking about all the things I could do with a blog. I can express myself, laugh at myself (and my kids, of course), and vent, as well as store business and product information and, hopefully, inspiration. Because, really, it all works together, my life has become full through all of it, not just a part. And I really loved the background design, that blurry vision as it all rushes past going, going, going....somewhere. But where? So it begins. Let's see where it goes.
"A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. "
~Peter De Vries
But mostly, I feel the urge when I look at my life, and think, "WOW...how did I get here?". "Here" is not normally a bad place...actually, it can often be the most wonderful, glorious place I have ever been, but it is normally somewhere that I never would have dreamed that I would ever be.
Once upon a time I pictured myself as an adult, with tattoos and body piercing, owning some sort of questionable pet like a pit bull or an anaconda, working a deliciously questionable job, like my owning my own tattoo parlor or something exciting, like an undercover cop, working both sides of the law, just like you would see on A&E. Then I married my first husband and sobered up. Oh, if only I had done the latter first! Then my first child came, the inevitable divorce, and then a decade of self discovery and, hopefully, improvement.
So back to the blog. I almost started on a couple years ago when I realize how funny and clever my children were..I don't ever want to forget! Then a second urge came when I started my own Arbonne business...I wanted to be able to store product reviews and maybe help others in their own business endeavors. But the final straw came when I bought the minivan.
Yes, the minivan. I actually received condolences from some of my friends. It was my grand admission to parenthood, adulthood, and responsibility...and one item I swore I would never own, right next to Mom Jeans and those little stickers people have in their car windows denoting their kids, which I have always wondered might be serial killer fodder...I mean, if there's some nut ball running around who likes to kill families of 5, why should I advertise?
But I digress. I now own my first minivan. And something happened. I didn't suddenly gain 15 pounds and start asking my children if they were wearing clean underwear. I did, however, pop in Violent Femmes, and transported all three children, a husband, and several dishes to my mother's house for Easter dinner. And the eldest didn't even have to climb over the top of the middle child to get to the back row and my husband didn't have to hold the cake in the passenger seat. That's when it truly, for the first time in my life, occurred to me that maybe, just maybe I could have it all. I could still be me and be wife and mom without compromise or having to give up pieces of myself. Maybe compromise didn't mean loss, but a mutualistic symbiosis. And I suddenly felt like a minivan crusader, the Masked Mom, who could Be and Do it all.
So I sit at the keyboard, thinking about all the things I could do with a blog. I can express myself, laugh at myself (and my kids, of course), and vent, as well as store business and product information and, hopefully, inspiration. Because, really, it all works together, my life has become full through all of it, not just a part. And I really loved the background design, that blurry vision as it all rushes past going, going, going....somewhere. But where? So it begins. Let's see where it goes.
"A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. "
~Peter De Vries
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