Let me start by saying that, right now, I’m sitting in a booth at Panera with the top button of my jeans undone and the zipper halfway down because I wore the wrong jeans today. They fit me weird, and are fine when I’m walking around, but when I sit down, they dig right in to my stomach region. Don’t worry; my shirt is covering the partial nudity, but I’m still not very comfortable.
I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for my professional life right now.
I can just almost fit everything in… at least enough to make it look like I’ve got it together, but as soon as I sit down and really try to get to work, I have something else to attend to. Something that will take time away from progress. I always have to undo the top button.
I’m not really even sure if that metaphor totally works… but it’s good in my head, so I’m going to just go with it.
I’ve got so many things I’d like to do and be right now. I, of course, would like to be an active and engaging mom. I would like to be an active and engaging wife. I would like to make us so much money by working from home that we never have to worry about anything ever again. We will frolic in the meadows and run the most successful cruelty-free, free-range unicorn farm in the universe.
I can have it all, right? Cake? Can I eat it, too?
What’s bothering me most right now is my work. My business. This thing I have created that brings some extra income into our home. My business is stable and, so far, small but dependable. This is something I’m very thankful for.
It’s not thriving. It’s not this super-hip, wildly popular, well-paying gig that I have painted an image of in my mind. I’ve got the time and energy to maintain, but not the time and energy to revamp, rework, or expand. I don’t have the money to pay some brilliant web designer to create a fabulous website or the time to learn how to make one myself.
I’ve got a couple of exciting work-related conferences coming up, and I’m hoping that they reenergize me. Even through my excitement, though, I can remember the feeling I had after the conferences were over last year… and I’m not looking forward to it. Spending the entire day with a group of trendy young professionals doing what they looooooove has a way of fooling you into a false sense of trendy-young-professionalism.
Then you get home and step on a Lego. Or see a bill poking out of the mail box. Or realize that you forgot to go grocery shopping.
That’s pretty much all I’ve got right now… although I should probably add that I didn’t sit down to create an invitation to a pity party. I’m just in a rut. We all go through these things, and I realized that I don’t always write about it, in an effort to convince myself that I’m on top of the world, looking down on creation.
What about you guys? (She asked, for the 5th time in her blogging career) How do you pull yourselves out of The Rut? A team of draft unicorns?
ANYWAY, it’s time to button up that top button… surreptitiously, so that nobody thinks I’m up to anything weird. It is a Panera, for goodness’ sake.
(I’d like to mention that this post was inspired by Mardra at Grown Ups and Downs. She’s been doing a “free write Friday” and, although I don’t think I could keep up a weekly feature, I love the idea of just sitting down and writing without worrying about structure and wit and… well, anything other than what I’m thinking. You should check out her blog sometime; it’s completely wonderful. I don’t even have anything cheeky to add about that!)