Fell Behind Friday: Reflect

From Merriam-Webster.com:

to move in one direction, hit a surface, and then quickly move in a different and usually opposite direction

I find this definition to be profound.  I am always moving in one direction--the direction of time.  I usually live in a state of feeling swept along with no way to gain foothold.  The days just keep moving, minute by minute, hour by hour; then the days move in to weeks--Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so forth and so on; the weeks become months--jog through January, fly through February, march through, well, um, March (I was going to stop there, but let's see if I can keep the alliteration going, shall we?), accelerate through April, muddle through May, jump into June, juggle July, adapt to August, swim through September, obliterate October, nod through November, and dream through December. (Huge breath in. That was actually a little painful.)  Then, as we all too recently discovered it is a new year, and where did the rest go? Honestly.  My daughter just asked me tonight how long ago I graduated from high school (according to teenagers, in the dark ages, apparently).  I do not feel like it has been twenty-five years--but what do I know?  What does twenty-five years feel like anyway.

Truth be told, I have been doing a lot of reflecting lately, and I have to say, it actually does feel a lot like hitting a surface then quickly moving in another direction.  You see, I am trying to figure out what exactly I want to be when I grow up.  As it turns out, age is definitely a state of mind.  Most of the time I still feel like I am a teenager--mentally that it--I never have actually gotten the feel for being an adult.  Yes, I have taken on and handle adult responsibilities very well, but I haven't quite mastered the rights of adulthood.  Most of the time I feel inferior to other adults, but that is a topic for another blog post.

Of course there are those times when I feel my age.  I struggle with thinking that I can re-enter the workforce at this point in time, or the point in time just a few short years from now when my kids are no longer under my control. Who would want someone my age to work for them when they can get someone years younger?  I feel I am past my usefulness.  Then, of course, there are those issues with my knees--they are happy to remind me that I am no spring chicken.

But I have to decide what I am going to do, what I am going to be.  The husband and I want a totally different life for ourselves once the kids are out of the house; a life that is simply not going to permit me to be a stay-at-home-wife.  I am going to have to gainfully contribute; the problem with that is that I will have to be gainfully employed.

So I am trying to sort out what it is that I want to do.  Truth be told, I have already accomplished my childhood dream.  You know, the one where you say, "When I grow up I want to be a . . ."  I always finished that sentence with "wife and mother."  Check and check.  In that sense, I am extremely successful.  But my life doesn't end at wife and mother.  My youngest will be a legal adult in a short six and one-half years.  And, yes, it is absolutely short.  The days are long, but the years are short, short, short (see above).

There was only one other time in my life when I knew with absolute certainty what I wanted to be.  I was determined to be the CEO of Disney, and I believed I could, too.  But I lost sight of that dream, somewhere around the time I became disillusioned with Disney, you know, when I actually looked at it through adult eyes. (Huh, maybe there were a few times I felt like a grown-up.) 

When I was living those CEO pipe dreams, I was enrolled in a business management/administration program at an university.  But just ten short classes short of graduating, I decided to earn my M.O.M. degree.  I don't regret that one bit.  What I do regret is not slowly working to finish up that degree.  I do not think that I am just ten short classes shy of that B.S.B.A. degree now.  Truth is, I no longer have an interest of being a business administrator, but I would like to say that I completed my degree.  I am just too practical, though.  I have no intention of working in a job that would utilize such a degree, so I cannot justify spending the time and money to complete it.

I know, it seems like to have drifted way off topic, but in truth I haven't.  I have been reflecting.  Reflecting so much that I am bouncing in a ton of different directions.  What is the opposite of reflecting?  Absorb.  Absorb is the opposite of reflect.

Honestly I have this mental picture of standing in the middle of a circle of mirrors and balls are pinging off the mirror, going in the opposite direction then bouncing off and going in another direction.  And there are lots of balls.  That is how I have been feeling with trying to sort through all my thoughts and emotions.  That is reflection.  Absorption. . .that gives me a mental picture of sitting down in the middle of the mirrors, closing my eyes and internalizing all my thoughts and emotions.  I haven't done that, but I might well consider it.  It would require allowing the past to just be.  Not something that comes easy to me.  I have always lived the motto, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."  A good motto, but prevention and beating oneself up for past decisions are two totally different things.  I think I may be operating as though they are a single entity.

Think I will call myself Lucy and hang out my shingle.  The mirrors will come in handy when I am acting in two different roles.  O.K., I think I am officially punch drunk.  Time to call it a night.