Should I want to have/be/do more in my life? I'm a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) and feel really lucky that I had that option. I think it's a really important job and generally fulfilling, but occasionally I can't help but wonder if I should be trying to "have it all," as the saying goes. For me, when I was about to have my baby, it was an easy decision to quit working. Of course, I think that was probably because I didn't really enjoy my job. It was definitely not what I would consider a promising career. But being lazy and not wanting to spend another 3 or more years in school, not to mention however many thousands of dollars it would take to get a new education, I haven't yet heeded that occasional urge to wade back into an educational forum to learn something different. And it seems so difficult to try to start something new. Is that me just trying to talk myself out of it, or trying to defend the decision not to go after it? Was giving up a career, even one that I didn't enjoy, really a decision at all? Or was it just me falling into a place where a lack of direction, born out of sheer boredom and an unwillingness to reasses my life and what I wanted from it led me to take the easier path and do nothing?
So I'm over 30 and still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Sometimes I wonder if I'm living up to the potential that everyone used to say that I had. Sometimes I wonder if it's even still there, or if it has slowly seeped away and even if I tried I'd never be able to achieve....whatever it is/was I supposedly had the potential to achieve. Maybe I just haven't found that perfect situation yet and my potential is still there - lying dormant for now, waiting for that "aha!" moment when it will wake up, stretch, take a deep breath and realize that "Yes! This is what I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life!" I can't decide if I want that to happen at all, much less now or at some time in the future. Then again, why would I be thinking about it if I wasn't at some sort of crossroads, right? Hmmmm...maybe I just have too much time on my hands and should spend more time cleaning the house or getting the laundry done.
1 comment:
I have had many of the same thoughts over the almost 5 years that I have been a SAHM. It is not uncommon to think about and wonder. You definitely have not lost the potential. You just have to figure out what is the right balance for you. I would enjoy talking about it in person sometime with you!
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