time and place

I've been having frequent "is this really my life?" moments lately. The most obvious inspiration would be our move, because I can honestly say that I never imagined that I'd be living in the Midwest. I'd never even been to this state, let alone this funky little city, before February of this year, so there was no predicting that we would be calling it home by mid-year. As I take the dog for walks around the neighborhood, it's easy to get lost in my thoughts of how crazy it is that this place is now where we live. It's so picturesque, like a neighborhood straight out of a 1980s sitcom, with kids on their bikes and families lounging on their front porches.

living in suburbia

But even more than the immediate, I've been thinking a lot about the other places I find myself in at this point in my life. During the packing earlier this summer, I came across all my old journals, and I chuckled over my late-teenage self's hopes about someday having three children. Even though that's been our reality for almost nine years, it's still surprising sometimes. With the oldest only a few years from adulthood, we're essentially in the beginning of the end of his time with us, which is mind-boggling for all that it represents. These children are such unique, incredible human beings, and I had no idea what was in store all those years ago as I wrote about my hopes for future motherhood.

I've also found myself at a place of unemployment, if you want to say it plainly, or perhaps we could go with 'a crossroads, career-wise,' to put it more gently. Almost 20 years after graduating from college, my work history primarily consists of work within the field that I studied. But... I don't think I want to be in that field anymore. So what's a girl to do? The last month has been focused on getting us settled in the new house and the kids settled in the new school, and September was assigned to finding a job. Well, dammit, September is here, and so my attention will now be shifting to this task. I'm not terribly enthused by the thought, to tell the truth. Couldn't someone just pay me to read books, clean my house, and type out my random thoughts at 11 pm at night?

So here I am, right here, right now. I wake up some mornings needing a moment to remember where I am, as I'm still learning to navigate a path around the bedroom to the bathroom in the darkness of the wee early morning, sans contact lenses and full consciousness. But other mornings, I need a little bit longer to really be reminded of where I am, in the bigger scheme of things. This time and place, while totally unforeseeable and a bit shaky and unsure right now, is undeniably kind of cool.