Crappity

Crappity weather, crappity mood.

Hate my job, hate my house, hate my writing, hate my body. Don't hate my family, but I spent the whole morning snapping at them for minor infractions, so they might hate me a little bit right now.

I want crisp blue skies, and for 2/3 of the crap in the house to disappear, and while I'm wishing for impossible things, I want another 10% of my body mass to magically go away. I want a full month's leave of absence from my job, and then I want a new job that isn't the job I'm doing now. Ideally, I'd feel like I'm actually helping someone instead of just doing busywork, and even more ideally, it would be something I can do without having to go back to school, because I don't have time in my schedule for night classes right now. I'd like a story idea to actually stay in my head once I have it, long enough for me to write it. I'd like to be able to set aside two hours every day to write without feeling like I'm neglecting my family.

I want two weeks all to myself. With a fat budget, so I can stay in a big city somewhere -- New York or Chicago or Atlanta or even some place I've never been -- and explore the streets for hours. I'm not even sure it matters if I speak the language. I just want to be brave and do things I've never done and then have the time and environment to absorb and process it.

I wonder sometimes what I'd be like if I hadn't been so timid in high school and college. I don't just mean self-conscious or insecure, because that's all teenagers, really. But I let opportunities slide by because I was afraid they might be uncomfortable. Opportunities for relationships, opportunities for travel, opportunities for expanding who and what I was.

And now I'm a fraud, with a dead-end job with a family and a mortgage and it's like I just woke up and realized that the world is out there, waiting for me with open arms, and I want it, I want it so badly but there are people who rely on me now, and I love them too much to shortchange them.

Or is that another excuse? Another rationalization for being lazy and timid? I don't know. How can I know?

I'm sorry. I've been very whiny lately. I don't know if it's the time of year, or the stress, or the weather, or a pre-menopausal hormone shift, or what. Female equivalent of the mid-life crisis?

How do I know? I think that's the worst part of it all: not knowing if any of it is real.