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would you like a little melodrama with your coffee?
By heather | December 19, 2007
You know how when something big happens, lots of people point out that God never gives you more than you can handle?
That’s been happening to me lately and this morning I started thinking that maybe God is giving me what I can handle, but I’m screwing it up by just letting everything pile on top of everything else. How’s that for existentialist philosophy?
Maybe I’m being told, “This is what you are supposed to be doing right now, so let some other things go already.” The problem is, I don’t know how to just let things be. I believe in intervention. In this case, I don’t know the difference between what or how to let go and what to fix.
My first instinct has always been to get the hell out, and while working on extraction make a half-hearted attempt to see if I can fix it. Or to obsess over the fix until I make myself and everyone around me crazy.
Example: when I start to not like my job(s) the first thing I do is post my resume. My resume gets updated once a month if not more, and it’s always ready to go. My first instinct isn’t to talk to my boss(es) and see if there is something else I can do or another job within the same company. My first instinct is to get the hell out. Which is why since graduating from college a mere 10 years ago, I have worked for 6 different companies.
Our house is another good example. We are in WAAAY over our heads with this place. There is a lot that needs done and a lot that I don’t like about it (including the damned gravel driveway which swallows the spike heels of my shoes every single morning and turns into a weed jungle every summer), but we don’t have the know-how or time to fix it.
So my first instinct is to sell it and get the hell out. Buy a place in a planned suburbia where everything looks the same but the yards are small and the bathroom is new and has a jacuzzi tub.
Even where we live (the city) is another example. I’ve never really loved it here, it’s too far away from my family and somedays it feels like we have all the drawbacks of a big city (like traffic and crime) but none of the benefits (like being able to walk places and Sephora). We’ve been talking about moving for almost all of the 9 years that we’ve lived here but yet we keep buying houses.
Those are easy things to change. But what if the things you are having to handle don’t have an easy out? And what if I’m making it harder by looking for one? What exactly is my problem anyway? Why would things seem easier if only…fill in the blank?
Before you ask, no one is sick and no one is dying. It’s not a marriage problem. This will all work itself out eventually.
I used to have a card tacked up in my cube that read “Anybody can handle a crisis, its this day to day living that wears you out.” (And BTW that is a quote from someone famous, but I’m not inclined to track it down and I can’t find the card. So there.)
That’s exactly how I feel. The tenuous grasp I had finally gotten on the business of day to day living is slipping and looms overwhelming in light of what’s going on. I don’t know how to fix it. Maybe I just need a vacation. (And here comes get the hell out rearing its unlikely head.) Maybe this entry makes no sense and I should fix it by stopping here already and pretending it doesn’t exist.
Topics: deep thoughts...or not, this is why, whining | No Comments »
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