This morning, driving to teach (driving is when I do my best work, which is why the world never sees it. Because by the time I get some place where I can write, I've forgotten it), coming down off the high of realizing that I don't have to do anything I don't want to do, I realized something.
"You do realize, self," I thought, "That this means you DO have to figure out what you want to do, right? I mean, you can't just sit around refusing to do things for the rest of your life." Crap. This question is the bane of my existence. My psychiatrist used to say, "We know who we are by what we love to do." I've come to realize this is the mark of a great psychiatrist. They have like five insights that they keep on rotation, and the rest of the time they just let you ramble on until it's time to insert insight. "I don't know what I love to do," I used to always say. Clearly, I still haven't figured this out three years later.
So, still driving down High Street, I started to try to figure out what I love to do. I love to go to the beach (except the sand. I didn't used to mind sand until I had daughters. Spend an hour driving home with a little girl screaming "I have sand in my virginia, Mama!" and you will learn to take a pitcher to the showers with you). I love the water (but I hate getting wet). I like to sit outside and read (except for the bugs. And the sun). I like to hang out with my kids, but only when we're doing something everyone enjoys (think no COSI, yes art museum). I like to travel (but not really to big cities). By the time I parked my car I knew I was in trouble.
Last fall I took a break from writing for two months. I didn't write anything. I had somehow gotten it in my head that I had decided to become a writer because that's what I'd always done, because that was my role. My sister's the lawyer, I'm the writer. It's something I'd always been good at. So, I decided not to be a writer. It didn't work. Instead, I realized that I didn't love teaching as much as I once had. I LOVE teaching, but I didn't like the teaching I was doing.
So, I'm no longer in the car and I haven't gotten anywhere. I don't know what I love to do. It's not even clear to me what I like to do. I do things because I am supposed to do them. As someone who grew up in a dysfunctional (hate that word) family, I spent all of my twenties just trying to figure out what people are supposed to do. What do mothers do? What do daughters do? What do friends do? What do good students do? How? How? How? I thought once I figured all that out, I'd be happy. Wrong. Now that I have a pretty good handle on what people are supposed to do (in case you're wondering, the average times women vaccuum their house each week depends on if they have kids (and carpeting, of course). Kids=once a day (on average). The answers from men are the funniest. "Once or twice a week or a month or so" is my favorite) I've discovered that most of what people are supposed to do makes me wildly unhappy.
What do I like to do? I like puppies and babies, as long as they aren't mine. I like warm weather, but not too warm. I like to ride my bike, but only on the way there. On the way home I realize what a stupid decision it was not to drive. I like to drink a glass of wine next to the outside fire in the evening in the summer. There, that's what I'll spend the rest of life doing. Now I have a plan.
I know lots of women in their forties, or more often fifties, who are living the exact lives I want to live. Maybe that's the ticket? At some point you get enough age and wisdom that you stand up and say "Eff this! I'm going to figure out what I love, and screw the rest of it as much as possible!"
This is my ongoing quest. What do I like to do? What do I love?
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