Fill in the Blank Friday!

As always, thank you to the lovely lady over at The Little Things We Do for the questions.

 

1.   My favorite quote is       probably this one, paraphrased from an episode of the West Wing.  "Words.  Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music.  They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume.  These are the properties of music, and music has the ability to find us, and move us, and lift us up in ways literal meaning cant."

2.  A bad habit I have is    Over analyzing.  Obsessing.  Thinking too much about things until they morph into something terrible and completely different from the original purpose.  

3.  The first time I felt like a "grown up" was       I don't know if I'm even there yet.  I'd like to say something like, when I graduated from college, or when Chris and I got engaged, but really, we're all still soul searching, and I still don't know what I want to do with my life, what I want to be when I grow up.  I don't think any of us ever do.

4.  Weekends are   usually for lying about in my underwear, sleeping in, reading a book, and not bothering to shower until about 4 p.m.  However, they always seem to end up with me having too many tasks to do, and too many errands to run.  I'm starting to think that they should be about me.  Finding something that I really want to do, and just doing it.

5.  When I was a child I wished my name was     umm... I have no idea.  Probably something from a tv show like Piper or Felicity.

6.  I wish        I could find out what I really want to do with my life and turn it into something wonderful without being afraid of failure.  I don't want to work for anyone, I don't want to work 9-5, I want to be creative, and I want to live.  To feel alive.

7.  A secret I have is       Probably something I lie to myself about, and therefore would have no idea what to tell you it was.

I'm in a really weird mood today.  I'm sitting at my desk at work, where I have been for the past five days this week, and the five days last week, and the week after that, and the week after that and I find myself incredibly frustrated.  I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I'm upset, and I'm fanatic.  I guess I never thought my life would end up quite like this.  I had really big dreams, I've wanted to open a bakery for a long time.  I wanted to be a writer, a librarian, an editor.  I've wanted to be a lawyer, a politician, a philanthropist.  I've wanted to be so many other things, and right now, I'm stuck being nothing.  I'm doing nothing.  My life feels empty and meaningless because I wake up every morning to come into work and sit at my desk and have nothing to do.  I try to keep myself occupied, read blogs, read books, play games, come up with ideas, watch videos about baking, plan our wedding.  But I can't get into any of it.  I feel isolated in a new place with only my fiance to comfort me.  I feel like I am sleeping through my life, and I want out.  I want to wake up in the morning and feel like I can't wait to get somewhere and do something.  To be busy enough to keep myself occupied and focused, and not wasting my time with stupid worryings and anxiety ridden afternoons, complete with shakes and hyperventilation.  I just don't know what it is, or how to do it.  I am cranky and frustrated all the time.  I do not feel like myself.  I don't laugh anymore, I don't get excited about anything, and I don't appreciate any of the good things because I am stuck in a hole and I don't know how to get out.  

Something has to change.  I don't know what it is, and I'm incredibly frightened that I will screw up my relationship on the road to whatever it is, but I can't continue to live like this.  Living day to day like a walking shell of my old self.  I want art.  Creativity.  Words.  Music.  Beauty and Passion.  This is no way to live, angry with the only person in my life that means anything to me, all the time, just because he is there.  Just because he is there, and not this ridiculous ideal that I have in a fantasy wrapped up in my mind.  Reading so much fiction has me longing for something that doesn't exist.  We can never be as happy as these people, have the love and passion for each other that they do, because they're not real.  They don't exist, their feelings don't exist, they are characters.  So why am I so envious of them?  We can never say or do the right thing at the exact right time, because some author somewhere didn't sit for hours planning out and wording everything we say and do to reach that type of perfection.  What is wrong with me?  Do other people feel this way?  Upset and angry with their lives because they, and their partner, and everyone else in their lives aren't living up to the expectations of carefully thought out words and flourishes and catches in their breath.  

 

I am being unrealistic to the extreme.  Yet I cannot shake this nagging feeling.  This yearning for something more than what my life is offering me right now.  For words that resonate, for touches that chill, for erratic breaths and heart palpitations.  Maybe this is just an inner cry of turmoil.  My creativity is nearly bursting out of my chest without any regard for the reality at hand.  It doesn't care that I am responsible for my own life, for someone else's happiness, to maintain the balance of our lives.  It wants to scream out, and sing out, and reverberate.  Bottling this up has literally caused me to tremble, to stutter, I can't control myself.  I need an outlet, a vessel for this pent up aggression and need.  There is nothing holding it, no receptacle, nowhere for it to be channeled and held and looked at.  I am scarcely able to understand it at all, because it is seeping out of me from every possible place.  I want to cry from the stress of it all, and to kick something because I had not realized and done something about it sooner.  I want to hide because I don't know what to do with it, what to do with this feeling that I have that I will never be enough, never have enough, have never had enough of whatever I'm lacking.  Purpose.  

 

Do you ever stop and think that God has put you on this planet for a reason?  That there is a reason for your existence, some purpose that you were sent here for.  Something that you and only you could provide.  Soul searching to the extreme.  What is it?  What is your talent, your ability, your reason for living.  When I was younger I thought it was family.  I thought it was love.  Compassion.  I wanted nothing more than to have a husband who loved me, and a family to take care of.  Children to nurture and help grow.  Someone to love with such fervency that it could not be contained.  That I could love someone so much, that I would make their life complete.  Lift them up.  

 

I am far to screwed up right now to be able to provide that kind of thing for anyone.  It was a locus entirely separate from myself.  Be something for someone else, have other people need you and love you, a constant need to be useful and necessary and wanted.  That does not exist for me.  I am doing nothing for myself right now, and definitely nothing for anyone else.  I am feeling useless and I am hiding from myself, hiding from finding what I want to do and be.  I'm frightened.  That I will never find it, and never feel any better than I do right now.  I live in constant fear that my life will never get any better than this, and there is then, no point in trying.  Just curl up in a ball, cry, and try to make the feeling go away.  It is exhausting.

Being so afraid and upset is exhausting.  Being useless is exhausting.  Sitting here every day with nothing to do is exhausting.  So much so, that when I do get home, I don't have the energy to be happy.  I don't have the energy to be excited to see anyone, to love anyone, to be kind to anyone, to want to do anything, to try to find out what it is that I should be doing to make these feeling obsolete.  To make sure that I never have to walk into this place and feel this way again, hopeless.  I had been too tired to think about it, to try to fix it.  This stops now.  I'm angry with myself for  letting it go on for so long.  When was the last time I was truly happy?  Culinary school.  Going to visit Chris on the weekends, showing him the things I had made, bringing slices of cake with me on the train, having people smile and tell me it was delicious.  I had friends that I loved to be around every day, work was not work.  It was fun, educational, creative, exhausting, and wonderful.  I would be antsy to get in the car and go to see the man I loved, because I had a good day and I wanted to share it with him.  To tell him what I learned, to show him something I had created with my two hands.  To live in a house with my sister.  My best friend.  My partner in crime.  What am I fucking waiting for?

I didn't want to put the work in.  The move was scary.  It still scares me.  I have no one here but him, nothing tying me here but him, nothing that I enjoy.  No one to talk to when things with him get rough, nothing to show for my life at the end of the day.  What did I do today?  Nothing.  I worked with no tangible result.  Task completion.  We talked about it in business school all the time.  The satisfaction and motivation in starting a project and seeing it through to the end.  Starting something, doing all the work involved, and then having something to show for it when you're done.  The relief that it hadn't all been for nothing, that your work was going uncompleted and unnoticed.  Where do I go from here?

I have been waiting in vain for my sister.  I want our plan to work out so badly, but I have no idea how to start my end.  Too complicated, too risky, too much start up capital needed.  I have no experience.  I don't know what I'm doing.  I don't have the effort to take a crappy job with crappy pay and crappy hours and learn what I need to learn to do what I want to do.  I don't have partners or staff.  I don't want to pay my dues to anyone.  I only want to work for myself.  It's unrealistic.  I don't know how to begin.  I want to work with her paper crafts first.  Start a business model.  Feel successful in what we're doing.  Knowing that we have a good product with selling potential that people would buy and enjoy and feel good about.  That would make me feel good about it, running our own business, being our own bosses.  Learning along the way.  Making something for myself, of myself.  But I can't keep waiting around for her.  It will never happen that way.  I can't control her life.  I can't control where Jason gets a job, and where they will move.  The thought of her leaving breaks my heart.  I don't know what to do without her.  I need to find a new avenue.  A new tactic.  I can't sit around and wait anymore.  I'm driving myself crazy.  Where do I start?  Writing this all down was a good step.  I'm going to go home and make some cupcakes and roll out some fondant and try to will it into telling me what to do.  Only time will tell, I will have to be patient.  Not one of my strong suits. 

 

How do people live like this for their entire lives?  Stuck in dead end jobs, only working for the money that they need.  Feeling exhausted and useless and frustrated.  Never achieving their dreams or their potential.  I am sleeping through my life.  Using less than 1/8 of my mental and creative capacity.  I refuse to be one of them.  One of the people that hate their lives and feel stuck and never amount to anything.  I have skills, I have smarts, and I have the support of a man that loves me.  The change starts now.