mrs-roboto's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- General Malaise Some of you have wondered where I have been. Thank you for missing me and leaving me a note or two. I don't have a very good excuse for the lack of updates as of late. I could tell you that I am having a small crisis about this whole turning 29 in eight days thing, that I keep having that "I should really be doing something more with my life" conversation with myself. The thought of the future is immobilizing me in many ways. 29 .... I really never even thought I'd make it but here I am. So what to do next? I'm looking at making a triumphant return to the world of academia - yep, going back to school. Something about the whole act of returning to college seems ridiculously cliché though. I feel as if everyone I know is doing it for a lack of anything better to do and I want to be sure that this is not just a knee jerk reaction to my recent unease with my chronology. Luckily, I am getting a little moral support from a few of the book groups gals who are attending an open house with me next week. I don't know if I could do this alone. You know how I said earlier that I never thought I'd make it to 29? That's not really true. It's just that I thought life would be far more glamorous than it is. Don't get me wrong, life is good. I have a fantastic spouse who makes me smile each and every day. I have a wonderful home in a fun part of town where I can walk to cute cafes and bars. I have great friends and a wonderful, supportive family. I get to travel at will. I have great freedom and creative license at my job. I have a million things to be thankful for but still, somehow, I thought it would all be different. I once imagined living in a fantastic, old brick factory turned artist loft in some small, Northeastern, hippy town where I'd write the great American novel. I'd spend the cold winters in the south of France smoking cigarettes and drinking white Merlot. Oh and that novel I mentioned, it would be the On the Road of it's time. Now, it's not that that I think I WON'T write that novel. I still believe that I have it in me. It's just a very different novel than it once was. It flows smoothly and is a bit more polished but it's also more based in reality than I'd originally thought and there's something sort of sad about that fact. Does that make any sense? What I feel at this point in time is that the storyline is probably more Thoreau than Kerouac, my life more Walden than The Subterraneans and at sixteen or nineteen or twenty two, I'd never imagined that to be possible. You know how when you're a kid your parents tell you you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up and you fully believe them? Hell, I totally thought that I was going to be a prima ballerina because they said anything was possible. Now, how many 5'2" ballerinas do you know? And it was obvious even at age four that I was going to be vertically challenged and uncoordinated. I guess at 29 I'm sort of realizing that the options are not quite as limitless as I once thought. And then there are the dreams I've been having which star people in my distant past. My grandfather who died when I was 13 comes to visit me at my adult home for a dinner party but I have forgotten to cook. My best friend from high school dies of Leukemia before I have a chance to say good-bye. I even had a vision that I saw one of my college roommates working at a pizza joint a few blocks from my house and I was convinced of it till another roommate told me it was absolutely impossible. God, this is just sounding much worse than I mean it too. I'm not super sad, just sort of funked out. I plan to take a long weekend and spend it in one of my favorite cities, Vancouver, with my sweet and thoughtful husband and my dear puppy. Hopefully, a little shopping therapy and a few fine meals will level me out. Till then, I'll spare you all my neurosis. 11:26 a.m. - 2003-01-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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