A Serious Case of the Blahs

Here I go.  Yup, you read that right, I am going.  Where you say?  I am actually going to stay right here in the comfort of my own room and “go” somewhere on this piece of paper.  I know, a bit of a let down isn’t it?  I just have been feeling a bit down, a bit hard on myself and a bit lost.  I know my main goal or job in this life is that of MOTHER.  I love that job, even on the hard and challenging days, but honestly when the school year starts (which, by the way, is LOOMIN very nearby) I am awash with time on my hands.  I clean the house, and that is one morning’s worth of work.  Great, the house is clean now what?  Do I read a million books? Play a million games on my phone?  Watch a million shows on TV?  Hike all the trails near me? Attend the temple?  Those are all the things I did last year....maybe I was exaggerating a bit on how many or how long, but you get the point, right?  I feel a bit hollow some days.  I feel like there is something that i really should or could do.  Yes, i should attend the temple and do family history work and the hiking is also sort of a should, cause you know, it gives me exercise, BUT that isn’t what i mean.  I want to follow my passion.  Any one of my passions would be great to follow, I just don’t know how to rally my wits to do that.  

I have tried for a few more than a few years to be a photographer.   One that people would like, trust and use for all their photography needs.  That sort of, times infinity, hasn’t happened.  Am I good at it?  Sure, I think I am.  People tell me all the time that I am, yet they continue to hire someone else.  It is disheartening and hurtful and frustrating and it zaps all the fun out of that particular journey. 

There is baking.  That is my second, maybe tied for first, passion.  Again, I think I make some pretty spectacular things, but how do you make that into the “dream job”?  How do you get the people of your itty bit community to want to turn to you for all their fresh baked goodness?  How do you get a bank to decide that you are a good investment and loan you the fundage to build the little bakery of your dreams?  Yeah, I haven’t figured that one out at all. 

Traveling is another one of those passions i was lamenting about earlier on.  I love the thrill of seeing new places, diving into the local history and seeing things for the first time.  I mean, I realllllllly love that, however, if you aren’t a super awesome writer, people aren’t going to fund your trips to exotic places so you can entrench in the local vibe.  If you aren’t a world renowned photographer they aren’t going to fund your view through the lens in the worlds coolest places.  And, if you haven’t already deduced, I am not a wealthy person that can just fund those excursions myself.  I mean, I have gone on a few trips and they have been heavenly, but they aren’t trips we can take every year on a budget of a housewife who stays at home with  her kids and her husband who does all the monetary work.

Are you beginning to see what I mean?  There is a wide world out there waiting for the awesomeness that I know is stored here inside of me somewhere...I am just unsure how to find and unlock that part of me.  I know we are all created with a divine desire to create, to do big things, problem is, most of us are floundering around not having any idea what that divine feeling really means nor do we have any clue how to put it into action!

Maybe I can be a traveling baking photographer!  how exactly would that even work?  I know there are world renowned chefs that get to see the world making their scrumptious food for the people wealthy enough to go to the places they cook, but I am pretty sure they don’t go around taking photos of their creations and selling them.  Heck, maybe they do.  

Right now, I wanna know what exactly I can do with my time after the kidlets head back into the halls of “learning”.  As you have been reading this, I am sure it has become painfully obvious that blogging or writing isn’t my forte, so we will scratch that one off my list.  What does that leave?  I will probably continue to clean the house every Monday and go to the temple every other Tuesday, and even hike as often as I can, but that leaves many an hour just open, blank, waiting to be filled with something amazing, i guess.

I tried being a saleswoman once.  I sold MARK are spin off of avon.  I ended up buying myself a lot of makeup but I didn’t sell much to any one else.  I think it is safe to say I will not be the next millionaire from the whole work from home crazes that seem to swarm the LDS female population.  We can check that one off the imaginary unwritten list of things Ryanne wont or cannot do this school year.

I did even try to work as a baker in a cute little cafe.  I say tried because they hired me, had me bake for two days, realized that two bakers was one too many and got rid of the one that wasn’t related to them.  We can check that one off the list too.  But for two whole days I was a professional baker, yes I WAS.  They paid me to bake things to sell to other people, see, professional!

I love to doodle too.  For a short time i thought I would design and create my own coloring book to sell to the masses, but that sort of petered out after I passed the finished doodles on to my husband who was to assist in the digitalization of said color pages.  I was going to make a personal calendar/planner too.  I had drawn all the pages, and again passed the hard stuff off to the man who works 40 hours at his work and another few hours at the farm, cause you know, then if it fails to come to fruition, it is’t my fault, he is the one that slacked off.  The story of my life, have an idea and abandon it when things get touch, or tedious.

OOOh, did I mention that I wrote a children’s story?  NO? Well, I did!  In fact, I wrote three or four of them.  I even sent one off to five or six book publishing companies.  I got rejected at every turn.  Can you guess what I did then? If your first thought was, “she gave up then, of course!”  You would be absolutely correct!  I didn’t give up right away though.  I worked on it.  I edited it, I sent it off to a sister who had school teachers read it to classes full of kids.  I showed it to an illustrator.  I worked hard to get that book published, and the rejection after rejection led me to disparity and that in turn lead to me quitting, throwing in the towel, giving up, calling it quits, and all the other cute little terms we have for when someone no longer cares to fight the fight!

I even went to college to get a degree in geology, because who doesn’t love to play in the dirt and collect rocks!  I quit that too.  That one was suppose to be a temporary quitting, but it seems to have turned long term.  It was back in the early years of being married and Aaron lost his job.  He was working and going to school while I went to school too.  We figured his education was the greater need (which it most assuredly was) and that I would work to finish putting him through school.  It was a success.  He graduated! But some where along the line, i decided not to go back and finish that last year and a half it would take to get that BS degree.  Math was too hard anyway!  I had a bit of the sour grapes attitude on that one, and possibly on other ventures as well.

I have listed the things I love and the things I have tried and the things I long to do here, right here, for you to read, not so you will pity me for my lack of follow-through-with-it-ness, but because I just had to get things that were in my head out of my head.  I had to see them in black and white.  Right there in hard copy.  Why?  I really am not sure there is a good why for it, other than I was feeling sorry for myself and feeling a bit of a wasted potential energy for lack of finding what that potential is.  That could be the reason I am writing this all down, or it could be that I am bored and feeling the blahs and that tends to put me into a funk.  Or it could be that I truly am searching for my awesome to put out in the world.

It is tough to say which one it is!  It could even be a combo punch that carries the heft of all of them wrapped up in one great big STRONGBAD boxing glove hit!

If one wants to get down to the nitty grit of the whole thing, it could be that even in the most important of all the things i have, and can, and will do in this life, I am feeling as though I am failing there was well.  I strive daily to do the right thing.  To say the right things to help my two children become all the things they can be, yet, often, maybe all too often, I don’t do it right.  I don’t say the right thing, I don’t do the right thing, and I don’t actually help them on this journey of life. Is that it?  Is that the real reason I feel the blahs?  Is that why I feel like there isn’t an area of my life that I am “winning” at?

People tell me that I have it rough, that with two kids that have different special needs that I am doing a great job, that I am “killing” it.  Those people don’t live in my house.  They don’t see the daily struggles nor do they see my constant failing, and failings!  I go to bed each night wishing I knew how to better parent and how I could have or should have handled those situations that smacked me in the face and screamed “terrible parent” at me over and over! Some days I feel like I am in the movie Groundhog’s day. Only unlike Bill Murrays character, I don’t seem to be learning for each new chance and just keep doing things the same way hoping for a different outcome.  I am pretty sure that is the definition of insanity!

Here it is, five and I haven’t even started dinner. I haven’t even thought  about what to make.  I have tomorrows dinner all planned, right down to the dessert, but today’s dinner?  I haven’t a scooby doo what to make!  I have spent the last hour writing this instead of being a good little ( k, I am NOT so little) house wife making food that is delicious, healthy for my family.  I was too busy sitting on my bed lamenting my sad little life of unfinished project after finished  project. Wahoo, I pretty much rock at this whole faulting life living thing! I deserve five gold stars for this!  Or maybe not!

Now, how do i change it?  How do I turn it all around?  How do i open the awesome that is inside of me? Better yet, how do i figure out what it is so I can more easily open it?

Aaron amazes me.  He went to school for computer geekery and he did it!  He finished it, got the degree and is killing it as the tech guy for the city of MOses Lake.  He actually loves what doe does, and does it well.  I want to know how to do the dame.  Maybe not the going to school, we are pretty far away from a brick and mortar school and I am not so good at on line school stuff, but the finding the real passion and going all out, full throttle, to attain it!  

There are so many areas where I just cannot see the forest in spite of the trees.  I feel bogged down by the need to be or be doing amazing things.  Am I the only one?  Has the rest of humanity figured it out while I am just flopping around life like I am a fish out of water?

I hope there are more who have a clue than don’t, but i also sort of hope I am not the only stunningly lamesaucical one out there!