Hubs and I have been having some pretty heavy conversations about the future lately. It's tough to try to plan - for anything - when his employment situation is so tenuous. WHEN he finally publishes a paper and defends his dissertation, THEN he can start applying for jobs in his field. If there are any. And if it is "hiring season" in academia. So in the mean time, I start to feel like I'm treading water and puttering around aimlessly, wondering where I should direct my energies.
We came to a weird stale mate this weekend when Hubs asked me to describe my "dream life" in a year or two. And when I told him, his face got a little dim and he admitted that that didn't sound too much like what he would have said. Huh. Really? We both got quiet and gloomy. We tried to talk about it some more, but we weren't getting anywhere. Several hours later, I took AugDog for a long walk and realized that we actually DO want the same things - stability, home, balance, a way to contribute to the world together - we just come towards those goals with our own baggage and our own ideas of how that "should" work.
And my baggage is full of selling my parents' house, aching for a winter without having to shovel my car out of the random spot I had try drive 35 minutes around the neighborhood to find, anxiety about growing old, not having a clear career path, having all kinds of passions and interests and not knowing how to direct them, watching more and more friends leave the city, and optimistic/realistic ponderings about Hubs' job struggles.
I've been obsessed with PINTEREST lately. My initial fervor has died down a bit, since I'm already starting to feel like it is the same stuff repinned over and over and over again, but every once in a while I see or read something that gives me pause. Last week I read a little button that said "If everyone in the world threw all their problems into the pile, you'd grab yours back." Or something like that. And that feels true. I guess maybe that's the most frustrating part for me - the Lord has brought me through some pretty incredible, heavy, insurmountable stuff in my life, but right now, I don't even know what my "problem" actually is. I pray for things like a job for Hubs, for a clear direction for my heartbreak about the world, for my friends. But it's all kind of nebulous. How do you "work through" something if you can't quite put your finger on what that something is?
Anyway. Home. That's what I want. Thats what we want. Eventually. And in the meantime?
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