Millions of women read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love and fell madly out of love with their own lives—myself included. I walked around for days in a funk. How indulgent to take a year and rediscover myself while traveling. Heck, on my budget I’d have to pick Omaha, Billings, and Phoenix but that could work I suppose. Wait a second. Never mind. I forgot that summer’s almost here and that means my kids have swim lessons, scout camp and the need to see every blockbuster to hit the big-screen. I don’t have the budget for reconnecting with myself. I’ll have to put that on my “things I want to do once my kids finally leave home” list. It’s a long list and, since I adhered to the new tradition of having my children later in life, I’m hoping the nursing home can read my handwriting.
Like Elizabeth, my life is missing something. I just can’t put my finger on it. I pondered on this for the five or so minutes I have to myself in the shower each morning before I had to get kids to school and daycare. Thankfully, while many families were dealing with job loss, my husband and I had never been busier. He was working out of town, I was working through my own busy season and my kids were hitting the home stretch heading to the end of school. I knew that my life was missing something but I didn’t have time to figure out what it was. And I felt guilty complaining about it because my life is good. I love my family and I’m reasonably happy with my job. My kids are sort of self-sufficient, in that they can pour their own juice but they normally drip all over the floor, and my husband still likes to come home from work. So, while riding a mule across Mexico or running in the Hawaiian Iron Man would be adventurous, I’m not ready to scrap my life on the chance that I might rediscover—something. Besides, what if I rediscovered that I am boring and shallow? Then I’d be enlightened, undate-able and alone. If I was going on a quest to find myself, I’d have to squeeze it in between soccer practice and meetings with clients—I just didn’t have the energy. Enter summer and a new, and unexpected schedule. I was moving to part-time because of a lack of work. This meant more—time. And less money, but that’s life.
Thanks to Elizabeth I took the time to think about what I wanted to do this summer and I realized that I didn’t have a clue. I made lists of stuff. Finally print the last six years of photos off the computer and put them in scrapbooks. Clean out the storage room. Learn to make jewelry. Actually plan at least one meal every week instead of making up a dish using all the leftovers in the fridge. Garden—the kind that grows something other than weeds and squash. Exercise for more than a week straight. Break my addiction to peanut butter cups. Redecorate the kitchen. As it turned out, I had lots of things I could do with my time and nothing that I really wanted to spend any time on. And that’s when it dawned on me—I don’t know what I like.
I’ve heard that people who go through a long period of illness learn a lot about themselves because they are forced to examine their lives and eliminate the unimportant. Elizabeth had to find a way to close the door on her old life and move into a new one because of a painful divorce. Both methods led to rediscovery, but I didn’t want my life to have to crash down around me in order to step back and figure out how to be truly happy. The only question is can it be done?
This is the answer to that question. I am turning this into the summer of awareness and I’m writing about it. I will discover 100 things I truly love, while still keeping my family in clean clothes and going to the grocery store. In the end I hope to emerge genuinely happy. That is my purpose this summer. Wish me luck.
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