Or is it mid-life? The fact that I’m even contemplating the grammar in this just shows you where my headspace is at the moment.
Throwing up my hands over here. Or throwing in the towel.
- I’ve driven approximately 4,328,133 miles in the past few weeks for sports. No exaggeration in that, I promise.
- The now-retired Husband has made coaching wrestling his.life. Like, maybe this midlife crisis post should be about him? He’s about ready to take a significant portion of our savings and open a wrestling school. I’m not kidding.
- RJ the Sheepadoodle ate an entire loaf of pumpkin bread the other day, and chased that down with some cat $hit from the litter box. So gross. But at least it wasn’t a sock? Ugh.
- V2.0 believes that his 48H deodorant needs to only be used once every two days. Hmm. I mean, he could technically be right on this, but we don’t need him to be testing this out.
My life is a $hit$how. But apparently it has been that way for going on four years now.
That tweet was from four years ago. I mean, maybe I’ll start my decline at 76 and die at 84? Gosh, this is getting more morbid by the sentence…
I’m turning this truck around right now and getting this post back on track. What I really wanted to post about was that I am actually embracing the chaos. Wait, what? Well, no, not really. I’ve just gone and gotten a belly button ring. Because, well.
I’m having a midlife crisis, remember? I’ve actually been wanting one for a while now (probably about four years, bwahahaha!). So here we are.
If I can be reflective for a moment though, how exactly did I end up here? No, not halfway across the country in Northwest Arkansas (that’s a whole other post, haha). But I mean here, having this conversation with myself. There was a time, not so long ago, when things were different. I was more creative, definitely more thoughtful, I took time for myself, and well, I laughed a lot easier (and a lot more).
I used to say that a day wasn’t complete until you’ve laughed so hard you’ve cried. I may or may not have taken liberties in my interpretation of Jimmy V’s ESPY speech where he said:
“If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day.
That’s a heck of a day.
You do that seven days a week,
you’re going to have something special.”
~Jimmy Valvano
But that’s because I used to laugh until I cried on the daily. All the time and over stupid shit. And it was amazing. But what happened?
It would be great if I could put a finger on it, the before and after, as if it was an event to re-write, forget about, or move on from. And when I am most reflective – when I am being real with myself – there have been specific moments; flashbacks of disappointment that have defined me. But everyone has those, right? So why, for so many years, did I let the decisions of other people let me down? Why did I take it so personally?
Well, I’m not sure. Probably because I gave a lot of myself, only to get very little in return. Which is fine, until it’s not.
I think this is what the past few years have been about for me. The realization that I’d like some reciprocation. I think I’d like my bucket filled a bit more. But instead of putting myself out there, I kept turning in, missing opportunities to connect. I stopped doing things I enjoyed out of perceived obligation for other things that brought me down. Which became a vicious cycle of self-fulfillment.
But I think I’m past that. Or at least past caring if I put myself out there and get nothing. Because for every strike out, there are homeruns, right? Maybe my belly button ring is the watershed moment in this realization. Or certainly a step in the process.
Because the more I have put out there, the more I have gotten back, and the happier I have been. Even over stupid shit again. And it’s amazing.
So what’s up next?
There is a reason I titled the post, Part 1. Yes, I am alluding that there is more to come.
Oh yes, definitely more to come. $hit’s getting pretty real, over here in #lifewithdubowsky. And I can’t wait.
