Trying to keep moving…

But it is so hard. I’ve been trying to get back into keeping this blog going. I type faster than I write so it is easier for me to do this right now than keep a paper journal. Still, I keep having the life and energy sucked right out of me. Every time I think I’m getting back to a better state in life, something else happens to kick the feet right out from under me.

But, as my family keeps reminding me, it could always be worse. (Thanks for the thoughts, folks, belittling my problems doesn’t make it easier for me to live with them!)

Anyway, I may gripe a bit, but I’m going to try to keep this going. It is good for me to have a place to write, to vent, to complain. It is far better to get all of this out and release the grief, the pressure, the depression.

On a different note, I would love to know how I can be this tired and still not be able to get to sleep… I think my mind is just racing when I go to bed, but it doesn’t seem to be anything specific.  I suppose it is just the general stress of my life, but it is certainly TERRIBLY inconvenient.  My two small children will not care that I was up until 1 am this morning, when they wake up between 5:30 and 6:30 this morning.  Sigh.  What is going on … and how do I fix it?

What can I do to improve my life right now?

I have been worrying a lot about our situation (go figure – both of us without jobs and we have two small children). Well, that really doesn’t help anything. The question right now is, “What can I do to improve our situation/my life?”

There are things I can do on the financial front.

• I can get haircuts a bit less frequently.
• I can make recipes that stretch food a bit more – things that are filling but take less meat for example.
• I can look at less expensive fruits and vegetables.
• I can make sure that the loads of laundry are full.
• I can look into insurance since we’re going to need to change soon.

There are things on a stress-relief level:

• I can write down my worries at night before bed and pick it up in the morning.
• I can take 15 minutes a day to have peace and quiet or listen to music.
• I can take the time to soak in nice bath once  a week.
• I can get out of the house once a week, even if I don’t have errands that need running.

It’s never too late to be who you might have been

It’s never too late to be who you might have been. George Eliot

I like that quote, but I wonder if it is true.  I’m a mother of two and I’ve got 17 years of experience in a field that I left (permanently, I thought) three years ago.  I’m “not a spring chicken” anymore, to quote my more colorful relatives.  (Yes, they have quite a gift with words!)

I started college in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech at the urging of my parents, step-father, and several other well-meaning family members.  “You can make a great living at that,” they said, completely overlooking the fact that I really wasn’t sure that I was all that interested in it.  What I loved at the time (and for many years earlier) was marine biography; my goal/dream was to work with Jacques Cousteau and/or to study sharks.  I excelled at biology and things of that nature, and I didn’t do so well in calculus and technical things.  What possessed my family to urge me into engineering still puzzles me; looking back I realize that all of my strengths were in biology, languages, writing – not maths and physics.

Oddly enough, I have since conquered my math phobia – I earned Bs in two semesters of calculus in the last year or two.  I’m currently studying computer science, having long since realized that I’m too practical to go into marine biology now.  Yes, I’ve talked myself out of it.  Besides, the big lure for me is gone.  Jacques Cousteau is long dead.  I lost that dream a long, long time ago, while I was still studying engineering.

What I wonder now is this: is it to late to be who I might have been?  Is it too late to be the person I might have been had I followed my own star, listened to my own heart and mind rather than those of my well-meaning but misguided family?

I don’t know.  It looks like I’m going to go back to work soon instead of back to class.  My husband’s having a hard time with his job search and one of us has to go back to work.  If I do that and take yet another semester off, I don’t know that I’ll make it back to school to be a programmer.  I don’t know.  I hate to think it is too late to get off this path that I found myself on accidentally after I left engineering.  I want to find  a job that doesn’t make me wince in the morning when I realize it is time to get up.  I want to find something that I love, that enables me to enjoy the time I spend at work.