I waste time. I watch TV, I get on the internet... and things don't get done.
I did clean the kitchen and the bathroom tonight. I did the laundry.
Jay and Dwayne are possibly coming over Sunday for dinner so that gives me a reason to clean.
I am going to see The Labirynth (yes, the David Bowie flick of your youth) tomorrow night with some friends from work. Every time I plan things with them I think, Should I stay in Chicago?
I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do. I have lives planned in my mind in multiple cities. They are similar yet vastly different. In each of these lives I carry with me the fear that I should be somewhere else and I just wonder why I can't find a home, a place where my soul resides, a place I know I need to be. And then I think what if I never find that and I spend my whole life dragging my husband and dog back and forth across the country, packing up my life, renting a U-Haul, getting new checks, new address labels... what if I never find a home?
My soul is unsettled. I feel like, for the first time in a long time, I have things figured out. I know what I want to do with my life (well, mostly) and I know what I'm good at. I know who I'm going through life with. I know what's important to me. I know what I believe.
But there's this part of me that calls me somewhere else, says I'm not standing in the right place, shifts the land under my feet until I topple over, legs and arms, mind and heart, tossed in different directions. I don't know where to go.
I don't know where I belong. My independent spirit is better suited to the thirteen year old I once was, when the world was wide open and nothing tied me anywhere. I like what ties me to Chicago: my hubby, my dog, my friends, my house... but when you're that young, when you're thirteen... you think, maybe I'll live in Oregon, on the coast, in a lakehouse. I'll write all day long. That's all I want. When you aren't thirteen, when you've lived some of your life, you realize that you probably couldn't afford a lakehouse in Oregon, you wonder how you'd drive your carsick dog that far, and you wonder if your current condo has enough resale value yet. You worry. When you're thirteen it just sounds like fun. Everything is plausible.
I know I am still so so young. I know I don't have kids (not that I ever will), I know I don't lead a life that bores me... I have ambitions, I have a passion for life. But so often I miss the girl I was when life first began to present its options to me, when I had all the confidence in the world, when my choices were not attached to job prospects, real estate...adult stuff.
I know we all remember the past more fondly sometimes. I know I'm not unique. But somedays, as I ride the bus south, along the lakefront, or when I walk around the city, I just think.
I think.
I wonder what the hell I'm doing.