Futurephobia

I'm feeling more than a little lost in the chaos of my life these days. Between an over-scheduled social calendar, three kids, the end of the school year, my job getting busier, emotional drama (which, let's be honest, constantly hovers around me like my own personal pig-pen cloud) and the fact that Joel lost his entire office staff this week, I honestly have no idea which end is up.

I just know we're busy.

And that I need a nap like a whore needs a washcloth.

Instead of sleeping, I've been waxing like mad, begging my friends to pick up my kids for me, memorizing all the qualifying conditions for medical marijuana in the state of Oregon and learning how to read charts and well, I'm just super! duper! extra! fantabulously! glad our therapist was able to fit me in for a personal session tomorrow morning. Then I'll go straight back to training an Adecco temp how to run a medical office that I only JUST TODAY figured out how to make work myself. (BARELY.) Then my afternoon will be filled with more vaginas.

But I'm totally not complaining! All this craziness is good.

I love my work. I love my clients. I love my man.

I love my children. I love that I got weepy when I was volunteering last week because the end of the school year is like one giant reminder that my kids are getting older.

(Things like Kindergarten concerts don't help.)

I love that every time I have an hour to myself, I set the stereo out on the back steps, blast the Talking Heads channel on Pandora and work in the garden until I'm covered in dirt and sweating like a pig.

(We're attempting to battle the weeds with a layer of cardboard covered with straw. I'll let you know how it goes if I ever finish it.)

I love that we paid rent on time this month.

I love that I LOVE our house. It's old and hoopty and impossible to keep clean, but it's short-bus special in a way that makes it the best place I've ever lived.

I love that there are two fifty pound bales of straw sitting on our patio right now.

I love that I now know what it looks like when chickens go "haywire." (They go BATSHIT for straw!)

I love pitching in at the clinic. I love how well Joel and I work together under pressure.I love how good it feels to be a part of building so many things: a garden, a family, a home, a waxing business, a start-up.

It's all crazy-making, but I spent so much time after the divorce focusing on RIGHT NOW and not looking to the future that I forgot how to dream about bigger and better things. I think I became futurephobic - almost as if any time I started making future plans or thinking about "when we [fill in the blank]," it meant I wasn't happy in the present.

But I've never been happier.

The building ITSELF is making me happy and I'm grateful to Joel for reminding me that thinking about the future doesn't always have to be scary. That even in the midst of all the chaos, we're still building something. Together. And when it gets shitty like real life so often does, he pulls me out of the moment and starts talking about the dream house we're gonna build in Hood River some day.

Which is a hell of a lot better than thinking about the past.

Comments

[Serena]

Love this post and all of you. :*

[Susan]

I'm confused about the whole medical marijuana bit. Please elaborate!

[jules]

You don't find happiness at a destination, you find it along your journey . . .