Musings

I spend a lot of time sitting by my kitchen window, looking outside. It's always been good for me to stare at the world, it offers me the time to reflect....something I haven't done very much of over the past six years.

I fell into my last job like I had the rest of them; because I needed a job and it was there for me to take (gratefully).  But I had never really thought about the job I was getting into, only that it would offer me the one thing that I needed: money.

It's my time now, to think about what I WANT.  I am going on EI, so I will be forced to live on around half of what I was making, which, after you crunch some numbers, is not that scary. It makes you realize how much crap you were really buying/ thinking you needed, when you don't. So maybe money doesn't have to be a factor anymore.  Maybe it never should have. Not that I took my last job thinking I was ever going to make the amount of money that I did, it just happened to turn out that way. And the money was nice, but at what cost? I didn't feel like my job was doing anything amazing for anybody, or more importantly, for myself. So I spent 6 years going through the motions, hating a lot of my day to day (and complaining about it ruthlessly at times). That's not the kind of life I want. I was never supposed to stay there as long as I did. And although I am going to miss some of the people I worked with because they were good folk, my place is not with them.

I have realized one thing in all of my reflecting lately: I cannot do the same thing, day in and day out, for the rest of my life, for someone else's gain.  I read a popular article recently about this exact thing, where the writer asked why you would work for someone who makes all your life decisions for you: how much you are going to be paid, how much of a raise you are going to get, how much vacation time you are allotted, even your own employment is in someone else's hands, under someone else's control.

I have no idea what I am going to do about my own life. I have never been a take charge kind of person, forging my own path. Actually, that's not true. I used to be. I was the kid in my mom's circle of friends who danced to the beat of her own drum, who had an individual spirit, who had heart, who didn't listen to what was right just because it was right. That girl still exists, she has just been pushed down so far by job stress and worry about making it in this life that she needs to find her way back to the surface.

So, this is my time to do what I used to as a young girl: daydream, and write, and think about all the things I wanted to do when I was 15, when it all still seemed possible. Because it is. Anything is if you want it badly enough.  It's the sacrifices that are scary to some people. But, would you rather sacrifice your happiness?

I have, and I don't want to anymore.