Ever wish your life was Bigger! Greater! More Amazing!
I know how you feel.
After declaring 2009 “The Year Best Forgotten”, I am determined that 2010 is going to be a much better year – a time for new beginnings, achieving goals and aspiring to greater things.
The trouble is, I’m having some difficulty defining exactly what my goals are and finding time in my schedule of everyday life commitments to fit in activities that are inspiring, uplifting and encouraging.
After almost 11 years as a full-time stay-at-home mum I’m starting to feel a little type-cast. Not that I regret my choice. I’ve loved every minute of being at home with my kids – well, not the toilet training bit, but most of the rest of it. I have worked from home over the years, initially as a contract specialist medical typist and more recently as a freelance writer, but generally I have simply spent each day keeping my family and friends motoring along.
My youngest child started school this year and I’m starting to feel like I’ve been painted into a corner socially. A corner labelled “loves to chat about her kids, cooking, cleaning and the supermarket” where I’m likely to be listening to someone extol the virtues of the latest cookbook giving advice on how to hide artichokes and pumpkin in chocolate chip cookies so that kids get their daily vegetable intake.
I have recently ventured back to uni in an attempt to once again broaden my horizons, although this seems to have backfired a little with the textbook apparently the result of an English to Academic Psychobabble Google translator. I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve spent too long in the don’t-think-too-hard wilderness and my brain is no longer capable of intelligent thought.
So, I’m wondering how to balance focusing on everyday life and social chit-chat with establishing connections with people who enjoy thinking about things more deeply. I do have friends that enjoy the kind of conversations that I do, so perhaps it is more an issue of adjusting the balance to allow for more time talking with these friends.
Maybe my problem is that I’m a little bit too much ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. I know a little bit about a lot of things – books, music, science, politics, social issues, education, religion, photography, history. Eclectic tastes ensure a wide and diverse range of interests, but don’t necessarily result in a passion to pursue any one interest in particular. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that I want to passionately pursue all these interests, so I end up trying to go in 10 different directions at once and therefore don’t go anywhere.
Anyone else out there feeling the same? Wanting more from life, but not quite sure how to get more without losing some of the great things that you already have? I’m open to advice, sympathy and even gentle constructive criticism, so feel free to leave a comment.
5 Responses to More to Life than Chit Chat?
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I am suffering a similar lack of passion. I’ve gone into freelance commercial writing, and now university study, to broaden my horizons as well. My other problem is that I’ve always been too ill-informed and gutless to form a strong opinion or to make it known. Here’s hoping the fruits of my studying labour are plentiful and tasty.
.-= Aprill´s last blog ..Five day weekend =-.
Yes, I can relate, Susan, especially having spent much of the past 23 years as a stay at home mum. As a (sometimes secret) writer, I have always struggled to find people in the places I’ve lived that I can chat about such things with, but have been lucky to make some great friendships online which has filled some of that need. Still, it would be lovely to have someone who lived closer who I could talk books/literature/writing with.
I can also releate to the ;jack of all trades’ thing, though have learnt in recent years that I simply can’t do everything, and am slowly learning to focus on the few that matter the most. But it’s hard, isn’t it?
Good luck!
You will always have one friend at least who will randomly text you when she’s bored using terms like “kafkaesque” to keep you on your toes.
.-= Meredith´s last blog ..National Curriculum is Smurftastic! =-.
Oh, how I can relate to your well penned words! I love family life and all that it brings but there is a big part of ‘me’ that stills needs to be challenged and nurtured.
I’m back at uni, it’s been 18 years since I completed my first degree. Early days but I think I’m really going to enjoy the opportunity to ‘chat’ with like minded people.
I’m striving for a career change, my goal freelance writer. In another life, I worked in marketing in the oil industry and now retail support.
I’ve noticed in recent years my tendency to drift slightly away from girlfriends I’ve known for more than 20 years. There is only so much chit chat I can pretend to be interested in.
Alot of personal satisfaction is felt when we connect with like minded people. It instantly makes life so much more intersting
.-= Life and the memoirs´s last blog ..ecru =-.
[...] am, as I’ve mentioned before, a bit of a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. I’m a wife and mother of three primary school-aged children, an eclectic and enthusiastic [...]