A Not So Simple Time.

I am forever feeling like I should have been born in a different decade…or century.

I know that we’re all born at the right time to the right situation, and we will never feel like we belong completely because this isn’t our home, and blah blah blah blah, but sometimes I cannot help but feel like I totally don’t belong in the now.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it is that I am doing with my life right now.  You know that question. It looms over me every waking moment. Do I go back to school? What’s the point? When we have kids in our house I want to stay home anyway. Do I quit everything and just write to my hearts content? That’s not practical. Do I find a job totally unrelated to anything I’ve ever done and just work for the money? That sounds boring. You get the picture, right?

So much to think about.

Not to mention that the world around us is always buzzing with something new. New electronic device. The new thing in hair care.  This gives you cancer. That leads to Autism. boot-cut jeans are out, now they’re back in again. This just in- tumeric is a superspice (news flash India has known that for years). How can anyone keep up with anything anymore? 

Sometimes I just want to zoom back in time and pick grapes all day in a vineyard in the Mediterranean while wearing an animal hide skirt and no bra. 

I wonder how women felt about themselves back then.

There was no social media interaction. Way less things going on to make you feel bad about yourself.

Men had one job- hunters, women had one job-babies. None of this “figuring myself out” madness.

You only had 1 outfit and nobody expected your hair to be brushed. 

No one wore makeup so there was no debating over which brand is best.

Eating organic was just eating.

Tension headaches probably weren’t even a thing.

A simpler life. More difficult in many ways, but simpler.

Can we live a simpler life right now, regardless of all the craziness in our lives today?

I am determined to. 

Despite the choices and the debates and the listening to never-ending opinions of others. I can own my own life amidst all the noise going on around me.

If I’m home all day long burping babies and helping with homework; I want that to be enough. If I’m working 40 hours a week at a job that I don’t totally love, but makes sense at the time; I want that to be enough. If I never become the writer that I have always dreamed to be, but write for the love of words; I want that to be enough.

I want the fact that I am living, and breathing, and loving, and learning in every moment of every day to be enough, even when it seems like a jumbled mess.

So I’m working on it.

picture courtesy of Viktor Hanacek. www.picjumbo.com