Searching for ???

Gary said something the other day in a comment he made, and I have been pondering it ever since.

He said that I appear to be searching for something, and that he hopes that I find it.

So I started looking at myself and my life and I started wondering what it is that I am looking for. And I think I might know the answer. I am searching for a purpose.

Growing up, I was the oddball. I was the one who didn't feel wanted, didn't feel important, and I felt like everyone was just waiting for me to screw up. To drop the baby and cause irrepairable damage, to burn the house down. I was actually told once, when I was in junior high, that my step dad believed that if the house was buring down around me, that I would just sit there and watch it happen, and perish in doing so. He actually worried that I wouldn't have the initiative to remove myself from a burning building.

I now know that they were wrong about me. I knew then too, but now I will gladly shout it from the rooftops. or at least I would if I were the shouting type. Now, my family watches and waits, but only to see me do something silly so that we can all laugh.

However, one of the scars this atmosphere left on me is that I feel the need to show that I am not the child they thought I was. I have transitioned from apparent underachiever to overachiever.

For me, this means that I think I should be doing far more with my life than I am doing right now. And I just don't know what that is. Unfortunately for the type A part of my personality, the universe does not tell us when we are fulfilling our purpose, so I wander around doing the best that I can to be useful, and I grow ever frustrated that I don't know what I am supposed to be doing. I take on more projects because I think I should be superwoman.

Every so often, I realize that with every smile, I change the world a little. and every year I live, I change who I want to be. I know that I have always wanted to own my own business, and I have and do. My dreams have grown and shrunk over the years (at one point they went multinational corperate). Dreams do that.

Add to that confusing mix of asperations (not aspirators, those are snot suckers) a desire for a life partner, travel, and maybe children (MAYBE, Shawna) and you get a person who, for all her apparent confidence is, well, lost.

So I go home each night, I knit, tend my garden and pets, I play with my imprinter and my soap, I chase carpet beetles and bake cookies (but I don't bake the beetles into the cookies because that's gross). And all through this I wonder what I should be doing because, although it's nice, and I really love being at home (except for the carpet beetle part) I think that I should be doing something to change the world or find a partner or have some kids or expand my business or...

Or, maybe realxing after a hard day's work is what life is all about. so perhaps after all, I am searching for acceptance that whatever it is that I am doing, right now, is what I am supposed to be doing and I should be patient. It's hard to be patient when you are a bit greedy and you want more, or maybe it's not that I want more, just different. But logic says that different, and more, aren't better, just different and heaven forbid, more. Even though it's not really more on my plate I want, but more out of life, because it's difficult to be satisfied with little when you think you have to make big.