These are a few of my favorite things?

Guess what I’ve been doing for the past thirty minutes. GUESS. I’ve been trying to see if there’s anything that exists on the internet that’s like a quiz or a survey or a questionnaire that helps me pinpoint what my interests are, but they’re all related to careers. And I don’t care about a career right now. Eventually I will, but not right now. I just want to know what I like. How weird and sad does that sound?
Have you ever found yourself wondering that? What the heck do I like?
This has been on my mind a lot lately. A couple of weeks ago, I was leaving the Sam’s parking lot, waiting to turn left, and as I watched the traffic coming up on the left my brain said, out of nowhere, “What DO you like, Sandi? We don’t even know anymore, do we?”
Typing that out just now kind of makes me want to cry.

I have a few “hats” that I wear (don’t we all?). The three hats I wear most often are wife, mom, and Young Women’s president (it’s a church thing, and it’s voluntary, and the Lord wanted me to do it, and I knew the Lord wanted me to do it long before I was asked by my bishop to do it, and even though I thought the Lord was insane for wanting me to do it, and I tried to talk my bishop out of it, I said yes anyway, and it’s one of the hardest most emotionally exhausting things I’ve ever done in my life but also IT’S AMAZING); those three hats…….they’ve pretty much taken over my life. And that’s mostly okay! (we’ll revisit the ‘mostly’) Being Mike’s wife and Erin’s mom are the two greatest things that have ever happened to me (so cliché, but things that are cliché become cliché because of their hardcore truth, right?), and being a YW president is mostly temporary in the grand scheme of things and I’ve already learned a truckload of things about myself that I never knew existed in the six months I’ve been at it and I’m going to have a terribly heartbreaking time letting it go when it’s time for someone else to be in charge and get to know these girls the way I have and it’s probably time for this run on sentence to end?
ANYWAY. Somewhere in the midst of becoming those three things, my interests and likes kind of drifted away into a garbled mess. I guess I should say this really only started after becoming a mom, and has been slightly exacerbated by becoming a YW president. It happens. It really does happen. Ask anyone who has become a mom in any sense of the word. I don’t want to call it losing my identity, because I still know who I am, but after so much time devoted to someone else and the insane change it wrought on my life, I just….I don’t know what I like to do anymore. Insert wide eyed emoji here.
Some examples:
-Before I had Erin, I still had thoughts of going back to competitive Irish dancing (y’all, it’s a magical corner of the world that makes my heart want to burst with joy).
-I had transitioned from working out at a crossfit box, to doing crossfit in my own garage, sans coach. I had thoughts of going back to a box once things settled down after having Erin (I’m still waiting for that to happen), and competing in crossfit again.
-My list of books to read on Goodreads was started looooong before Erin was born, and the bulk of it is largely unchanged from that time. When I say unchanged I don’t mean I haven’t added anything to it, but I’ve added the same types of books, for the most part (although it has evolved, slightly).

Updates on these examples:
-I realized last week that I’m probably not going to do Irish dancing anytime soon, if ever again. I’d love to, I really would, but it’s something that just isn’t going to happen in my life in a future that I can see. It’s sad, but life changes and moves on to different things, so it’s mostly alright. It sort of makes me want to cry, but also it feels okay to let it go? I need to figure out what to do with that giant wig….
-As for crossfit, I still love it. I love it really hard. I’d even love to compete again. But, like Irish dancing, it costs an arm and a leg and I need all of those to do crossfit so it’s not worth the cost. I really can’t do it the way I’d like without a good coach and a better facility than my garage.
-Full disclosure on the books I’ve been reading for the past year. Wait, first, a description of the books I was reading up until a year ago: historical fiction, historical nonfiction, general fiction, cozy mysteries, occasional dystopian, YA adventure books, and fantasy. Now, what have I been reading for the past year? NONE OF THOSE THINGS. Mostly (that is a popular word in this post). Last October a good friend said to me “Have you ever read Edenbrooke?” and I said “No” and she said “HERE’S MY COPY OF IT YOU WILL LOOOOOOOVE IT” and that’s the story of how I read that book three times in one month (not an exaggeration) and got my mom hooked on it as well (hi Mom). Mom read it in one sitting at her dining room table while I laid on her couch and watched HGTV. Edenbrooke opened up a world of literature to me that I didn’t know existed. Clean romance that’s not steeped in scripture and born again Christians. SOMETIMES I JUST WANT TO READ SOMETHING SWEET AND ROMANTIC WITHOUT LEARNING ABOUT JESUS, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK? No it’s not because I’ve literally spent the past year delving into the world of clean romance books. I didn’t know this interest in me existed. Fun fact: On Good Reads, I haven’t even logged half of the books I’ve read because I was afraid my friends on there would think my body had been taken over by someone else OR that they’d lose respect for me because romance books get a bad rap. I need all the friends I can get. I’m not as social as I used to be.
(Side note: romance books are AWESOME, and when your life is overwhelming or you’re down in the dumps, it’s really really nice to read a predictable, happily ever after story with a swoony hero and a storyline that makes you want to make out with your husband when he gets home from work.)

You’re probably wondering where I was going with those examples and what this all means. That makes two of us.
At some point in the past 4 years, while dealing with pregnancy, a traumatic birth recovery, postpartum depression, therapy for postpartum depression, and beating myself up for not magically losing the baby weight overnight, my mind went into auto pilot and said (read this in a creepy, disconnected voice) “yes, yes we do still love all of those things and want all of those things exactly as they’ve always been in your life without anything changing ever. Forever……foreeeeeeveerrrrrr….” It was easier to do that. I didn’t have any extra energy to expend on creating new dreams and ambitions and desires and plans and whatever.
But I’m not the same person and that laundry list of life experiences in the previous paragraph, plus a bajillion more, changed a LOT of the things in my life and within myself. Of course what I used to like and the plans I used to think about wouldn’t be the same. OF COURSE (at this point I scratch my head and wonder why it’s taken me 4 years to figure this out).
I’ve never been caught off guard, by myself, like this before. I’m referring to how I don’t know what I like anymore, are you keeping up? Y’all, I DON’T EVEN LISTEN TO MUSICAL THEATER ANYMORE. Hamilton is the only soundtrack I’ve really listened to in the past….5 years? But really who HASN’T listened to that one? (hi again, Mom). Do I still love musical theater? Yes. Do I listen to it as much as I used to? No. Do I have any idea why? NOPE. The desire just isn’t there. That was a really random example.  

As I’m writing this I’m thinking that everyone experiences this ebbing and flowing of interests in life. I feel like mine has happened at a super advanced speed. Maybe you can relate to that. Your laundry list of life experiences might look different than mine, but it probably hurled you through some sort of vortex that spit you out on the other side and you’re trying to figure out what you like or who you are.
I should probably address the ‘mostly’ from earlier in the post before I forget about it, because I DID forget about it and I just remembered it so here we are (remember, I said it was mostly okay that being a wife, mom, and YW president has taken over my life?). So I firmly believe, and you can disagree with me if you want I don’t really care, that taking care of my marriage is priority number one in my life and taking care of my kid is priority number two (yes, duh, if my kid is throwing up in the other room, I’m not going to be making out with Mike instead of helping Erin. I know how to love and take care of my kid. And my husband. That’s the second reference to making out with him that I’ve made in this post. I worry I’m painting a false picture of how often we make out). In a perfect world, where both of those are done perfectly (taking care of my marriage and taking care of my child), they actually take care of each other simultaneously and benefit each other. In real life, it’s a strange balancing act where one leans more to the side than the other and I try to balance it back out and then the other one is leaning and then the next day we start all over again. So, if I made a pie chart of my life, my marriage and my motherhood would be like….I don’t know, 85% of it. Actually, most days, they would be closer to 100% and THAT’S not okay because I should be taking care of myself too. You gotta put on your oxygen mask before you can put the mask on the person next to you.
I firmly believe that the important areas of your life only get better if you take care of yourself, and find….SOMETHING to do with yourself besides clean the house and make dinner and go over the budget week after week and stare at a menu/grocery list until it magically writes itself and negotiate eating meals with a 3 year old and talk yourself into cleaning the shower which is your least favorite weekly chore and etc.
Now you’re like “hypocrite….” and I’m like “I KNOW. THIS IS PAINFUL. I NEED A LIFE.”
I’m going to go listen to “The River” by Garth Brooks on repeat until I figure out what the heck this river is I’m floating on at the moment.  

What DO I like, anyway…..

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