While I Was Busy Making Other Plans...

I have tried a couple of times over the last week to get this written but always got sidetracked or just found something blocking my flow to write. It's harder to get words out that you are choking over than to talk about the happy stuff. But, in the end, it's all happy stuff, right?!

At the beginning of this month, Rob and I moved into my mom's house for our Transitional Phase in this Great Adventure of ours as a way to: spend time with her before we leave, save some money, and become mobile/compact as this will be our lifestyle for quite a while. Now, no one can ever get this wrong: I love my momma with all my heart as one of my closest friends and respect her dearly. BUT, I am so ready to have the smell of salt water in my nose, the feel of sand under my feet, and the endless possibility of whatever the ocean and future holds before us that my soul is about to climb out of my skin and take flight! This, of course, means that I am going crazy no matter where I live! (Not to mention we are married 30-something-year-olds - as a general rule, all of us in that category crave our own space.)


We have had our highs and disappointments during this time, such as finding a 37' boat with all the equipment we would need and which we could (unbelievably!) afford but missing out on it by one phone call. We've been excited to sell almost all of our possessions, but sad to part with our "histories" while not get as much money as we were hoping for most of them. We've been happy to stay on schedule for moving forward with our non-plan plan, but sad to leave our first marital house and the comforts we put in place to make it our home.

Lately, I have been overwhelmed with family and friends' lives, moments that are beautiful and heart-wrenching. The weekend after we moved in with Mom, four of my closest friends - one couple with a toddler and another couple with a baby on the way - were evacuated from their home only to learn a week later that the massive Bastrop Fires had destroyed their homes and almost all of their possessions. I found out that they lost everything after leaving my brother's wedding rehearsal while arriving at a good friend's bachlorette party. While my heart broke for them, I didn't have a chance to talk with them or process the weight of such a loss until days later. I, instead, needed to focus on the wonderful event on-hand: it was a whirlwind weekend of fun and joy as family and friends came together to celebrate my brother's love for his beautiful new wife! This was a time I could not allow to be tainted by anything as I my heart soared in his happiness with a gentle woman worthy of his love!
 

There was little time to recover from that weekend before another momentous occasion for the family took place: my father was hooded as the first doctor in our family. On his side of the family, he was the first to earn his bachelor's, master's, and - now - doctoral degrees (I was the second for the first two degrees and there is only one other undergrad degree); this is not an easy feat for anyone, but it is made even harder when higher education is not prioritized in your early life. I think that most father/daughter relationships have a certain level of dissonance as the daughter becomes an adult and we have been no different in the past. I was thrilled to get to spend some quality time with Dad talking as loved ones the night before his graduation, putting that past to rest. The day of, I could not have been more proud to see thousands of people on their feet for my dad as he approached the stage while tears streamed down my face and chills covered my body! I was overjoyed that he had achieved this amazing accomplishment and with a passion that gives me hope for the future of large corporations! I wanted to run down and give him a huge hug once they said his name. Unfortunately, I had to literally run out of the commencement ceremony with 45 minutes until my plane started boarding to come home and (fortunately) celebrate the marriage of two beautiful people... where the party didn't stop until 8:00 the next morning! I have no idea where I found the energy for it, but part of it may have been the knowledge that this party of love has to hold me over for a while.

O.K., O.K., enough with the play-by-play of people you may or may not know - I was really hoping that this blog would be about the adventures Rob and I set out on, not so much a "story of the last few weeks..." Unfortunately, this is the adventure as we stand now, the saying "See you later", the rapping up of this life we have been so accustomed with for so long, the letting go of all that was "mine" and "his" so that we may start a life of "ours". I think Rob is finding that change fairly easy because he - thankfully - is just a pretty easy-going man; it is my self-actualizations that are causing problems... mostly just in my head, though.

While my life has been filled with others' joyous moments and sorrows, the quiet times find me still having a hard time with the fact that I have not gotten a job which I really love and fulfills me, that I am right now packing to fulfill what was once a pipe dream instead of going toward what was once a realistic dream to me. I truly believed that I worked so hard to put myself in a position that would ensure job security, giving myself the education and experience that would shoo me in any door I stuck my foot into. While I struggle through the pain, I get defensive and feel as though people are placing the blame on me because I didn't try hard enough or "gave up" trying to find a job (actually, I have been flat-out told as much by people I love). They don't understand how much their words cut, that every job rejection is the same as a miscarriage (the CDC rejection being a second trimester one) and that my stepping away from all of this is the same as a heartbroken woman, after yet another failed try, reluctantly asking her husband to wear condoms for a while just to stop the heart-crushing pain.

Except getting pregnant is just biology and chance. I didn't leave my ability to help others in a meaningful career up to chance - I took that bull by the balls and made sure I would never have to go through this! And, yet, here I am... going through this.

I'm not sure what to do here. In all honesty, for my own sanity, I did stop looking and applying: my ego can really only take so many years (three, apparently) of being rejected through radio silence or the wonderfully reassuring form rejection emails that a handful of companies still send. But, before I stopped looking, I went through years of scouring every possible position I qualified for, I attached my resume to countless on-line applications while I filled in all of their spaces with the exact same information, I spent endless hours writing and filling in until the sky turned blue in the early mornings after starting the process at sunset. I really don't think KNOW people have no idea how many non-profit, government, and university positions I have applied to because I myself lost count so long ago. I ended up in the back of an ambulance trying to crack jokes with the EMTs as I suffered through an anxiety attack brought on by a job rejection.

I think that, at some point, I am allowed a break from doing that to myself again. Just for a while...

While sorting through my feelings, I have come to realize that I feel "entitled", and yet I haven't figured out how to let that feeling go: I still think a decade of NGO and government work along with my education should entitle me to just one fulfilling, non-corrupt job where I get to help people and be respected. Less than 10% of the U.S. population has a master's degree and I busted my ass to get two while working in my field so that I could go to the front line in the fight on poverty and HIV, never asking for or expecting a huge salary (because that's not what it's about) but just enough to know that my "toolbox" is respected. Hell, even just being listened to by a management team who has less education and experience combined than I do by myself would have sufficed! Entitled, selfish little bitch that I am... I know. I need to work on that. (I think I've been watching too much "House" lately and am taking on his self-depreciating sarcasm when he knows he's got a point...) The realization that the feeling of entitlement is there and the lack of knowledge on how to get rid of it (or, at this point, the lack of desire to do so) is what irks me when I am told that I still have to "pay my dues". To me, that annoying three-word phrase begs the question: Whose dues have I been paying all this time if not my own?

So, doing the type of work I love is not my life path this day... or this month... or this calendar year. Instead, I get to focus on the fun stuff for a while with my husband: We are taking our first trip this weekend to the coast to seriously jump into the buying process! We have been able to find some boats online in the Clear Lake/Kemah area and we are packed for a weekend of family, sea breeze, and taking the next steps in this adventure! Nothing will be bought this weekend, of course, but I hope to have pictures of at least some prospects to post next week.

What a journey it has already been for us: just a year ago we were looking at - and drooling over - "boat porn" with hopes to one day have a larger boat but "one day" feeling so far from us. After that morphed into the process of seriously looking for potential boats, it seemed forever until we would actually be standing on our prospective boat. Now, for the first time, Rob and I are physically going "boathome" shopping together, standing on what will be the floating home of our dreams (well, of our price range), allowing us to follow the dream that draws us and the light that warms us!