When I Should be Working...

I am sitting here at work after 5pm for no good reason.  There are good reasons to be here, but I am not currently here on behalf of those reasons.  I am here reading through old blog posts written by a person that seems less and less familiar.

Life is both cruel and kind in that it rarely meets expectations.  I feel much more in control of my destiny then the girl/woman who wrote most of the words on these pages.  I also feel more out of control then ever before because I realize how difficult it can be to get what you think you want out of life.

I have always been the person who can get by with doing too little.  Things come easily enough to me that efforts can often been at near minimum and I can still meet others' requirements.  However, my expectations of myself have always been somewhat undefined.  I have too often been overly content to drift along with the current or go where I am told I need to go.  Deciding what I actually want to work toward is something that I have struggled with since the moment I stepped out of school.  I am better at preparation than realization.  Much better at following directions than setting goals.

My life lends itself to being overly self-involved.  I don't have children to care for or a spouse to consider so I am really only responsible for thinking about myself.  Which, kind of inevitably makes you a little self-centered.  Sometimes I look at my friends with kids especially and wonder if I am missing some fundamental personal growth that exists from having your life centered around someone that is not you.  I wonder if I will never really be grown until I am someone's mother instead of someone's child. 

However, I think the benefit of my self-centered life is that I continually have the freedom to change without disappointing others.  If I don't want to be what I am or where I am then I can stop and change.  I'm still free to define nearly every aspect of my life on my own terms.  No one is really counting on me to be the same tomorrow as I am today. 

Reading through this time-capsule I realize that I have grown a lot in every way but I am nowhere near there yet.  Which is maddening and anxiety-producing but also so very freeing.