progress

Week two finished on a high note: my only true day off all week. Five 6am wake-ups, 4 days of work, and two 6-hour days spent in a tutor certification class at the Rochester Hills public library. The class proved to be a happy risk as it called up all my instinctual excitement over the prospect of teaching language. And so, I've since reconsidered my whole life, as happens so often these days. Suddenly, a few more years in the classroom and $30,000 doesn't seem like so much, especially considering what I'd be trading in: life at a desk and a head full of thoughts wanting to be spent.

Other things this week:
1. The cold won't end. The schools are closed again tomorrow for wind chills in the negative thirties.
2. We finally have books again. I started into two other novels this month and couldn't commit. Behind the Beautiful Forevers seems to have stuck.
3. I cooked a true down home meat-veggie-starch meal this week, and I really felt like a grown up.
4. We are balancing friends-time and us-time, even though I get greedy, wanting to dance around the living room with him all night long. I begrudgingly gave in to a drunken game night which turned out to be fun for the whole family.
5. Funny how the moments build on each other, forming a story, though you only see it looking backwards. First is me crying, scraping pizza sauce off my plate into a sink of dirty dishes. Second is the decision to take a risk, take the class, become a tutor. Third, my tutor teaching telling me: "you're so good at this." And now, making plans for more classes, to stand at the front of a classroom one day.

living together

Lessons from the first week:
1. Survival demands a lot, including: buying food, cooking food, cleaning up food, dirtying what you've just cleaned to clean it again.
2. Learning how to cope with the work week monotony, after two weeks of sleeping in, can lead to tears and irrational thoughts of: what am I doing with my life?
3. Morning light can save you. Making coffee, making the bed, making up from last night's frustrations, it all feels better with snow white sunshine pouring in.
4. This place remembers a lot. I uncovered the grandparents' wedding album from 1960 and was uplifted by the simple black and white portraits of the small, conventional ceremony. This morning we watched his parents' 15 minute wedding video, recorded on VHS.
5. I need more hobbies. I've pledged not to reach for my phone while I'm not at work. Therefore: more photos, more working out, more cooking, more cleaning, and knitting.
6. Yoga is saving me from otherwise impenetrable blue moods. My teacher-- the leotard-clad fifty year old on the "Yoga For Beginners" DVD-- is convincing me that "connecting with my body" and finding "inner peace" may not be mumbo-jumbo after all. All day long my brain runs wild but for twenty minutes I can feel at ease.
7. Ups and downs, ups and downs. We are never in one place, not living in the highs or lows forever. We are just living and trying to stay sane. Good talks this week about indifference, that gray area of not feeling much, and how that is a more than okay place to be. Passion all the time is impossible to sustain.  Pleasure feels good but joy lingers everywhere, even in the dark places. Just waiting.

Go to work

The other day I posted a Facebook update asking my collective newsfeed to stop picking on the women who choose to be engaged before 25. I received a lot of feedback, some supportive, some confrontational. It got me thinking about my own selfishness, how easily I pick out the faults of others without considering how I might be guilty of the same transgressions. I constantly think in terms of "they" or "people need to" and when I say "we" I don't consider enough about "me." What am I putting out there? Am I being kind enough, am I giving everyone a fair chance to be a complex, faulted, human person?

For example, I've spent years believing that I am not part of the "entitlement" generation. I've read countless articles about how people my age believe they deserve certain things-- the killer job, the house, the car, the life-- but are not willing to wait or work for them. Pffft, I'd think to myself, those people are just awful.

Running parallel to this belief is my own anxiety over my, so very important, existence in this universe. What am I doing, I think (every day), and where am I headed. Should I go off to graduate school? My job is so bland; I'm so smart. I'm bored and I deserve to be challenged! And so I'd go on and on, thinking myself into a huge stink, while sitting around, eating pita chips, rolling my eyes, and doing absolutely nothing else to change the situation or the thoughts themselves.

I deserve? I deserve!? I deserve nothing! Sure I worked hard in school, I got good grades, I played the game and got by with a really good reputation. But, the truth is, I don't try very hard. And considering the extremely privileged life I was born into, completing college and getting good grades is hardly anything to go crazy over. I did what I was supposed to. And now I deserve whatever I want? I'm totally guilty.

It's time to start working hard. It's time to shut up about my incredibly decent job and go to work. It's time to stop thinking "I deserve." People don't just stroll into museums and universities when they're 22 and get all the jobs. People don't just have the money to buy awesome little houses and awesome little dogs. Just because my dreams are simple doesn't mean I don't have to work to make them come true. 

I'm sad to admit that this is a breakthrough. Oh, I guess I have to work to get what I want. And, I have to be patient. And sometimes, life is going to be really sad and/or boring and/or frustrating. At least now I know that it's okay. And I know there's something I can do: I can work. Work at work. Work on my writing. Work on my brain thoughts. Work on my hobbies, my relationships, and my savings account. I need to go to work and never stop.

So this is me strapping on my work boots and turning off that pitiful whiny voice that keeps telling me what I deserve. This is me getting up in the morning and earning the life I work for.