Existential

Since the age of 29, I’ve had exactly two jobs, besides being a mom(for reference, I'm 37 right now). The summer that Erin turned 2, I worked the check in desk at an ER, one night a week. The pay was phenomenal. The trying to get my body back on track after one single nightshift took an entire week, and then it started all over again. It was a nightmare. I was in a constant state of uncomfortable tired (HOW DO PEOPLE WORK NIGHTSHIFTS. I COMMEND YOU). The other job, I had for a couple of years, and it was for a friend of mine that owned a billing company. She did all the hard stuff, and I went into her office once a week to call people and let them know, POLITELY, that they needed to actually pay their bill that we’d mailed to them four times, or it would go to collections. One time a woman told me she would be taking us to court if I ever called her again. Another time, I’m pretty sure I got cussed out in Spanish. Customer service is not for the faint of heart, so, luckily, I’ve had enough years’ experience with it to put myself in a mental space of “these people, and anything they say, don’t matter in my life,” so I could walk away every time without taking any baggage with me.
Both jobs were a tremendous blessing. They presented themselves at times when a little bit of extra income went a long way to making life more comfortable for our family. Neither of them felt like “mine,” though.  

I’ve been feeling really stagnant in life lately, without a personal purpose. Sure, I have a purpose as a wife and a purpose as a mother, and I love both of those so much, but I don’t have anything that’s just me, just for me.
I’ve probably thought about this since the day Erin was born, knowing that eventually she would go to school every day, and I would need to find something good to fill my time.
Yesterday morning, I chatted with Mike about everything I’ve been feeling, and he thinks I need something to…not distract me, but keep me busier so then I’m not dwelling on all the frustration inside me. But that’s just the thing. What do I use to distract me??
Driving to get Erin from school yesterday, it hit me that there are a lot of ways I’ve changed in my thirties. I would say that most of those changes have been tremendous. It’s not for nothing that for the first time in my life I like myself, I like who I am, I like who I’m becoming and the direction I’m going in life. I feel like I have full autonomy over my choices, and what I’m doing, for the first time…ever.
However, one thing that is different from my twenties, I just don’t have the motivation or drive to do…stuff. As stressful, frustrating, exhausting, and monotonous as it can sometimes be as a stay-at-home mom, I like the comfort of it. It’s very comfortable. If there is a day where I don’t want to wear anything but stretchy pants and a t-shirt, I don’t have to. If I want to spend half the day reading, I can do that. I can get the housework done at my leisure. I can go out to lunch with Mike, or run errands or go shopping whenever I want. I regularly attend classes at the gym. Lucky for me, I’m married to a man who’s delighted to provide for our family, and has told me time and time again that we’re doing okay, and I should take my time before rushing into something to contribute to our finances. But he also loves me enough to recognize that I need something more, and he wants to support me in that.
This wasn’t me in my twenties. I liked working and getting a paycheck. I liked contributing to our finances after we got married. I don’t know that it’s so much that I’m scared of doing that again, or that I’ve just become complacent and lazy. In terms of making choices and speaking my mind, I have made leaps and bounds in this decade of life. In terms of putting myself out there, and doing something new and different, or even putting myself in a situation to interact with people I don’t know, I have digressed a LOT. I’ve become an introverted extrovert, if you will. Twenty something Sandi was the most annoying kind of in-your-face extrovert. I don’t know if we’d be friends?
It’s beyond frustrating because I really do feel stagnant and I really do want to do something, BUT. Mike asked me if there’s anything I’m interested in, or anything I really want to do, and the answer is no. I…just no. There is nothing that comes to mind. Truly. Even if I went back to school (which I won’t because we paid off our student loans two years ago, hallelujah, and I am not going back into debt for education), I have no idea what I would study.
This whole conversation started because I had been telling Mike about a thought process I have had recently. I know people I went to high school with, who knew at the beginning of our senior year where they wanted to go to college and what they wanted to study and do for a career. Did all of them stick with those plans? No, but some of them have. There are people that knew what they wanted to do at the age of 17, they’re still doing it, and they love it. That is remarkable and insane to me. I can’t imagine being 17, and knowing what I want to be doing with my life when I’m pushing 40 (when I was 17, my biggest concern was having enough time to hang out with my friends). I know there are people that changed their mind midway through college, or even after, but then they find the right thing, the thing that is IT for them. This level of conviction and drive is completely foreign to me. I have never felt it about anything, the sense of “this is what I want to do, this is how I want to make a paycheck, this is what I want to fill my time with and it will bring me joy.” For me, it’s always just been connecting one season of life to the next, and whatever jobs came my way that I could be happy with.
As I was thinking about this the other day, I had this epiphany moment realizing that’s just not who I am. That’s not part of what makes me, me.
And that’s okay.
I don’t think I would’ve been willing to accept that a decade ago, but I accept it now because I understand better just how different everyone is, and that there is not one single aspect of life that everyone fits into the same mold. Including this.
As I had this epiphany, I felt strongly that I need to lean into it. Maybe not lean into it so much, but simply accept that this is part of who I am. That scares me because, if this is part of who I am, how the heck do I ever figure out what IT is, if there even is an IT? Am I going to wander aimlessly for the rest of my life, trying to fill it with meaningful things for myself, but not feeling a real connection with any of it? That sounds both exhausting and depressing.
Part of me wants to hold onto the comfort and easiness of what my life is right now, even though I’m becoming dissatisfied with it. This is easy, this is safe, and I kind of want to keep it that way (my gosh, I’m Bilbo Baggins).  
But there is another part of me that wonders if there is something beautiful and wonderful and tremendous that I could do or be a part of, and that can help me continue evolving into the person that I want to be and that my Divine Parents need me to be (but maybe I’m also Frodo?). It’s terrifying and exciting to think about that, but it still brings me back to I have no idea what IT is.

This is not a cry for help. This is not me asking you to message me with suggestions or ideas. This is me doing what I’ve done for most of my thirties, which is to put myself out there, in case someone else feels the same way, and maybe reading my honesty will lighten their burden a little or help them feel seen.
To be fair, not everything in my life lately has been an existential crisis, and overwhelming feelings. I’ve basically been listening to Paint the Sky with Stars on repeat, so that can only do good things in my life. If you only listen to one of Enya’s albums in your entire life, make it that one. It’s some of her best stuff, and it came out before A Day Without Rain, so you don’t have to listen to Only Time (which is her only song that makes me want to barf).
I’m just now realizing the subconscious reason I’ve been listening to Enya so much, is to deal with everything I just wrote about. It’s the circle of life.