So many questions. Maybe it’s part of hitting your 30’s. I have been questioning everything lately. Maybe the fact that I have no answers and zero certainty makes it more alarming than it should be. I mean, it’s normal to question your decisions, right?
I feel like I’ve been transported back to 2012- not knowing what job Al will have next month, or next week. Not knowing where I’ll be living next month or even next week.
Did we make the right decision moving to Nevada? How do I even accurately access that? Are we successful? No- at least not by our own standards. Are we less successful than we were in Bellingham? No- it’s different, but I wouldn’t say we’re less successful necessarily.
Why do I have dreams and ambitions? It seems pretty futile. I am constantly faced with working to have the money I need to have the life I want (and still not really having what I want). Or, scaling back, lowering my expectations and just having…..less. And being ok with that. I’m constantly caught in between. I feel like I am never satisfied. And, nobody understands. NOBODY.
The wealthy say to just keep working towards your goals in that flippant sort of maddening way that already successful people have. Because, for them, that’s how it worked. They set goals, they worked hard and they obtained their goals. Simple.
The poor, the truly poor, they can’t relate at all. “But, you make X amount of dollars a year- I wouldn’t even know what to do with all that money! You’re so lucky.”
Me, I’m just stuck in the middle. I’ve seen enough of the super wealthy to know exactly what I’m missing out on. I have enough experience with the high end of the middle class to know with what ease other people who work similar jobs and have similar backgrounds succeed in ways I simply do not. I am so close, yet so far.
And I’ve seen the poor. The food stamps, the welfare, the addicts, the alcoholics, the low class who never get out of the vicious cycle that in many cases stems from being poor. From a lack of options.
I feel helpless. I feel like I do my best to be a good person, a great employee, a wonderful parent and a loving wife. While I understand I’m far from strapping water bottles to my feet for lack of money to buy shoes, and none of my children are battling a terminal illness and I never go to bed hungry, I also (selfishly maybe) am discontent and want…MORE. But, not badly enough to climb the corporate ladder and never see my children and work 60 hours a week. So, I feel trapped, like I will forever be wanting MORE, sentenced to always know and intimately understand what I will never have.
I’d rather be ignorant. I wish I couldn’t name your expensive purse from 15 feet away. I wish I didn’t know how much almost every vehicle I pass was worth. I wish I couldn’t tell what brand and how much you paid for your jeans just by seeing the shape of a logo on the back pocket or the type of stitch detail and whiskering. I wish I didn’t know exactly what luxury SUV I would drive if I could afford it (Infiniti QX80 just FYI). I wish I had no idea the difference a private school makes in the options available to a child and the quality of k-12 education they receive. I wish I had no idea that if I could land a job I am qualified for and totally capable of doing for the right company in the right city in the right situation that I could be making double what I am making now. I wish I didn’t know how much my husband paid for my engagement ring. It shouldn’t matter of course, but it does, deep down. I wish everything were different. I wish I were content- with whatever I have. Why do I have this unshakable feeling that I deserve MORE, that I am meant to have MORE, do MORE, travel MORE.
Then, maybe I would have less questions.
The Uncategorized Life 