One month in: What have I learned in my process of self-reflection?

Honestly, I haven't really learned anything new. Nor have I come closer to making a decision about my life (hence why I intend this to be a multi-month process).

For the month of January I took a pretty standard approach to decision making.

Step 1: Identify the decision to be made
What kind of career or job do I want to have, or what kind of career or job do I think would make me most happy?

I wonder if this is an over simplification of the decision to be made, or perhaps, I'm trying to put this decision into too simple of terms. It's what I've decided to build on, which might get hashed out better in subsequent months and styles of decision making.

Step 2: Identify alternatives
As I see it, I have 2 paths I can follow.

Librarianship/Research: For the purpose of this exercise I see librarianship and research as the same option, or that they have the same value. Both represent the more 'standard' job. Both would likely be reasonably steady hours, greater pay, and rely on my degree and work experience. In a year's time I'd be looking into courses on stats, or research methods, or librarian-related courses to improve my job prospects.

Aerials/Writing: Unlike the above, these are not exactly the same job, but I feel like to do one, it might require the other because there isn't a lot of money to be made at either. This would definitely be the path of the artist. In year 2 of this process I'd be focusing on taking further aerial teacher training, and figuring out how to market my current books, while writing a new one.

Step 3: Identify uncertainties
One of the biggest problems I have is coming to peace with my level of income and my contribution to the Milne household. I have a lot of wants which require money: nice clothing, nice house, fun vacations, good food, good wine, a car in good working order.

If I choose the librarian/research path, my income won't be much of an uncertainty, but it's a huge one if I choose the aerials/writer path.

Building on this is, what is it that makes me happy? A small part of me thinks (or maybe just imagines), if I figure out what will make me happy, the choice of career will become obvious. Some beacon will shine out of the fog of my life and tell me what I'm supposed to do with myself. Then the whole income level won't matter because I'll be happy, and isn't that the most important thing in life?

Step 4: Gather relevant information
I took this stage as coming up with a list of pros and cons. I repeated this exercise on a couple of different nights, thinking I might have slightly different insights on different nights, then compared what I came up with.

Elements I would consider important in a job:

• Ability to be physically active.
• Ability to have creative outlets.
• Some flexibility in hours to allow for: being available to Ruth if she needs me during the day; occasionally volunteering with a charity.
• Yet some consistent number of hours a week (anywhere between 15 and 20, I think).
• If not receiving benefits, being paid sufficiently to offset not having them.

Elements I would dislike in a job: (which may basically be the opposite of my list of pros)

• Inconsistent hours or schedule OR too ridged a schedule interfering with the amount of time I can spend with Ruth and Andrew.
• A desk job where I sit all day.
• No opportunities to exercise my creativity.
• Low/little income, and/or no benefits.
• Too much time spent alone OR little social interaction.

Step 5: Make a decision

As I stated above, I wasn't necessarily expecting to come out of this single exercise with a final decision. I can't deny, however, certain elements: physical activeness; creativity; flexibility; at least some interaction with others, are jumping out at me.

You would think at this point the signs would be pretty clear, but there's that uncertainty I identified. How much or little income am I comfortable with? That is what I need to figure out.

I had a dream last night (after having written the bulk of this blog post) that seemed aptly timed (and rather suggestive):

I was at Base Camp at Mount Everest. Andrew and Ruth were with me to wish me luck, but I was getting cold feet. I wasn't sure I wanted to go on the climb (the success rate is low, many people die). Additionally, I was supposed to go to Australia (I'm not sure where this came from) after I was finished the climb, meaning I wasn't going to see Andrew and Ruth for weeks. In the end, I decided to stay at the base of Mount Everest, to spend time with my husband and daughter.

A much smaller 'mount' I actually scaled. The Notch, in Jasper National Park, on the Jasper Skyline Trail.

I still remember worrying as we climbed The Notch that I had gotten us into something I shouldn't have, as Andrew was suffering from a bad head cold at the time.

That was a heck of a day, 20+ km, 3 mountain passages.

Until next time.

Ciao,

Andrea

Barely controlled choas

That's what my life feels like, right now. Like I'm juggling, and just managing to catch the balls, or possibly occasionally dropping one and having to snag it on the bounce back. I'll throw this out there right now, into the vast space of the Internet, that if I've let someone down over the past couple of months, I'm sorry. Very sorry.

Let me explain.

First, the family emergency. In June my Mom was hospitalized. She spent something like 10 weeks (my Dad knows exactly) in the ICU. She received an organ transplant mid-August. Her life is no longer in immediate danger, but it still recuperating in hospital (she was bed-ridden for almost all of her time in the ICU, so rehab is going to take awhile). We hope she'll be transferred to a hospital more local to where my parents live soon.

I still hope to write a couple more details posts about this experience, not because I want to air my family drama, but because I want to provide some education about my Mom's health concerns. Mainly, her illness and its cause, and the importance of being an organ donor.

While my Mom was in hospital, Andrew and I continued to house hunt. After viewing 35+ houses, we settled on a semi-detached in the East Ward of Kitchener. It isn't perfect (is that even possible?), but the main and top floors have been recently, and nicely renovated (the house was built in 1850), and it's in the neighbourhood we wanted. We took possession on July 30th, and have been slowly putting the house together, made more difficult by trying to reacquaint ourselves with friends, and by the fact that we've essentially had 1-day weekends all summer since we lose a day to visit my Mom most weekends. We're also slowly tackling some larger house issues (the roof needs to be redone, the foundation needs to be looked at for a small seepage problem, etc).

If moving and sick family members weren't enough, we've also somehow found ourselves involved in the possible expansion of a small business, and a start-up. These are two different ventures, involving entirely different people and different ideas. I can't talk too much about either of these at the moment, other than to say I'm excited to be involved in both, but hope to blog about them in the future.

And have I mentioned lately that I have a 10.5 month older daughter who is constantly on the go? She crawls like a speed demon, and can cover the length of our main floor in the blink of an eye (especially if she's chasing after Tabitha). We don't think unassisted walking is far off at this point, which means I'm going to be running after Ruth pretty soon. How time flies.

I've been wondering for sometime if life will ever not feel this way--like we're juggling chaos. I hope that it's due to the events of this summer that we're feeling extra crushed, and eventually the stress will dial back a few degrees. We'll see, I suppose.

Ciao,

Andrea

The death of 1000 paper cuts

Is that the proper saying? Or maybe it's just death by 1000 cuts (not specifically paper ones)?

Andrew asked me recently if that's how I was feeling, and my response was: 'No, maybe just 50...okay maybe just like, 8.'

The point is, I feel like although nothing monstrously terrible has happened to me (and therefore I have no real reason to complain), I have several small stessors that are pushing the camel's back awfully far.

We are in a transition year, Andrew and me. Andrew defended his PhD thesis (finally, I'm married to a doctor!) and handed it in for final approval yesterday. Now we can stop living like students (although extremely well off students...I mean I've been gainfully employed for 7 years) and we can find a more permanent place to live, but before we do that we have to pick a country, province and city to live in. And before we can do that, Andrew has to get a job.

Andrew's feeling a lot of stress right now. You might have thought that much of it would have lifted after the defense, except what we do next and where we'll live depends on him. Theoretically I could stay in my position for the rest of my working life, but that's not ideal for several reasons, among them being there's no job for Andrew at the university.

I'm not going to enumerate all the cuts here, that wouldn't be fun for me, or for you the reader. There are others, of course. Simple ones like the insistence of winter to keep happening, more complex ones for me like maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and the never ending fight to keep motivated to write and query agents and publishers.

I guess the point is, no one's life is perfect.

Perhaps it's a reminder that everyone needs now and again. Not only is no one's life perfect, but perfection isn't possible. And what's wrong with having a 'pretty good' life, or the 'best possible life I can achieve' anyway? Sometimes it seems like everyone is so hung up on obtaining perfection, they forget to just enjoy life for what it is.

I don't know, maybe I'm not making any sense. What do I know, I've never studied philosophy or divinity, or some other deep-thinking major. I'm a librarian. A messy, frustrated, stressed-out, and yet incredibly lucky, loved, and talented librarian.

So, I guess that's good enough.

In the meantime I'll keep dabbing salt water on my paper cuts.

Ciao,