Getting Ahead Of Myself

I'm having a particularly bad moody PMS episode so that's coloring everything this past week. It's been a long week. I feel stressed and anxious. I went to the informational session at the Occupational Therapy school I want to apply to, which was good, because now I know for sure that this is what I want to do. I think I want to work with geriatric and/or mental health. I want to help people keep their lives and their dignity intact. I think it's my perfect job.

But of course, because I'm in this weird anxious frame of mind, it set off a whole internal chain reaction of other anxieties. I've just been in this mindset that I have to go back to school as soon as possible because a) I'm getting older, b) I want to be able to support us better, and c) now that I've figured out what I want to do, I just want to get started. But I also want to start a family, and frankly, there's more of a timeclock ticking for that biological thing than for school. I can always physically go back to school. I can't always physically have a baby.

So these things keep cramming themselves up against each other and making me feel rushed and breathless and anxious. Somehow I've managed to tell myself that it all needs to happen within 2-3 years or it's just not going to happen at all.

And that's just not true.

For one thing, Terri is getting better (slowly but surely) and hopefully will be back to work in some fashion within a reasonable amount of time. That would help in many ways. For another, it really doesn't matter if I go back to school within 2 years or 3 years. I'd have to retake anatomy (because it would expire), but oh well. And frankly, if the baby thing doesn't work out for whatever reason, we can adopt, foster-parent or just get a big dog. Right? Right.

This thought -- that it will all work out in time -- is helpful. Sometimes I don't believe it. But miraculously, right now it's making me feel better. Things are as they are, and instead of school and baby and frantic home life, I have plenty of time to read and do all the other things I enjoy like art, exercise, bake, spend time with friends kid-free, etc.

I still want those long-term things, but it is nice to have all our time to ourselves. And it's not like I'm just twiddling my thumbs; I'm accumulating all my prerequisites and I'm keeping healthy. Things are happening. It's just that now that I finally know what I want in my life, it's hard to wait.

In the meantime, baking pumpkin cake and experimenting with amaretti cookies is fun. And working my way through gigantic piles of books is also very satisfying. Speaking of, I started Ghost Story because I didn't have anything else that I wanted to read in my pile. We'll see how it goes.