the dream!
Greetings. I have the Monday sickness, which is a fierce desire to organize my life, clean everything in sight, plan every meal for the week, and cross off all my 'to-dos.' When this becomes impossible, right around 2:00 pm, I begin to despair and cry out for my former life. By 4:00 pm, I am recovered and playing happily with Bowie. This crazed self will settle down until next Monday, and instead of planning all the things I will do, I just do what's in front of me. It works out, I suppose.I believe it is called 'acknowledgement of limitations.'
Aside from that, I would like to announce the I have finally managed to pinpoint my life's dream. Dreaming is a bit hard for my detail-oriented brain. In fact, that is one of my marriage's great strengths. Joel dreams, but has a hard time breaking down that idea into manageable tasks toward completion. I, on the other hand, am firmly rooted in the practical. I struggle to see the big picture, because as soon as he begins to dream aloud, I see the action items necessary. I often care nothing for the grand idea; instead I find immense existential meaning in completion of tasks. This freaks some people out, whereas some of you resonate easily.
Though neither way of being is more virtuous than the other (indeed the human race needs both types of people in order to thrive), I do think each person should learn to posses both traits. Naturally, I prefer my way of being, but I've been speaking to myself a lot about dreams, and trying to really keep in check the overly practical side of my brain - you know, for balance sake. I am not terribly successful at it, because I have noticed that all my answers to what I want to do vocationally are still so dryly practical - I certainly do have difficulty reaching beyond what I perceive as possible.
Today, I found a small answer to this cosmic question. I want to remember that a vocation, the work of my hands and life, does not necessarily translate into a job. What I mean is to clarify that asking yourself what you want to do with your life is not the same question (and therefore should not necessarily have the same answer) as asking yourself what your dream job may be.
We all need to feel useful. The work of our lives is key to our identity and happiness. As Americans (read workaholics), I think we automatically equate life satisfaction with job satisfaction. "What's your dream job" is synonymous with discovering the point of your existence. I think it's dooodoo. For some of us, I think the path to personal fulfillment comes by separating these questions. For others, it makes more sense to marry those questions.
Either way, as I was journaling this morning, I realized my dream!
(I implore you to please forgive the horrendous spelling errors)
and I will sleep. C'est parfait.
