Reality

Lily, my beloved friend who I haven't seen in seven years, (*sigh* I fear that I will not ever get to Japan to see her -at least until my kids are grown), posted recently on her blog about reality. Life as it really is. I admired her for it, the being real, not always putting up the cheery, happy pics and ignoring the less than perfect things about life. I agree with you Lily about calling a spade a spade and not putting the "bling bling" on life. That really made me smile when I read that by the way.

I think I did do this more when I first started blogging, but haven't in a while, I kind of get on the roll of just posting pics, closing my eyes, mentally going "lalalalala, what I do not acknowledge doesn't exist" and going about the day to day grind. Not to be a downer, but mainly to show solidarity with Lily and be able to look back at this and smile on the less than perfectness about life as it is right now, here it goes, some of the rough and tough things about right now:

1. Eric. He screams and has breakdowns all the live long day. He is driving me crazy. I find myself yelling at him a lot. Which probably compounds his issues. It makes me feel like a failure at mothering. Like I'm so bad at nurturing that the only way my child can get attention is to scream and yell. Darrel says it is a stage, which is probably the case, but I feel like I need to come up with some sort of a way to change this dynamic or I'm going to lose my mind. (Or punch a hole in a wall.)

2. Spirituality. I feel stagnant, dead in some ways. I'm feeling so worn out, tired etc. that I just don't care, don't care about a lot of things, and it's been that way for a while. Particularly about helping other people, service etc. I have a really cynical attitude about it all right now, "like who's served ME lately???" Which sounds horrible, is horrible. And I can name very quickly awesome, kind, fabulous people who have been wonderful to us, so I can see that love coming my way, but you know, I'm just done right now.

3. Marriage.  Maybe it's the fact that we are seven years in, but man, this has been a tough year. If that's the case -that it is unlucky number seven, then I'm looking forward to Nov. 9 when it will be 8 years and we can move on. I don't think the flip of the calendar will bring the reprieve I hope for though. Just more talking, working, figuring it all out, plugging away at it. We are the same in so many ways, but in the ways we are different we drive each other cuckoo. I worry often that we are not going to make it.

4. Family. Douglas Coupland  was on to something when he wrote All Families are Psychotic. Mine is, well maybe not psychotic, but crazy yes. I can say that because the ones who aren't crazy read this blog and the ones who are don't, lol! I guess what is hard is that I really can't rely/count/expect/have much support there. And more than that, they don't get much from me. What sucks is that I feel orphaned.

5. Time. When do all these women who have multiple children, keep beautiful, clean and uncluttered homes, make a go of fulfilling careers, run etsy businesses on the side, attend Relief Society meetings, workout, etc etc do all the stuff they do? Seriously! I've seen their blogs and I hate them. Actually more like I hate me because of them, why can't I do all that stuff and do it really well? Why am I so ordinary, untalented, unaccomplished? (and fat?) I realize that this kind of comparing is dangerous, and is actually a sin, because  of the mental burden it can place on you, but really can't Becky Higgins show me her house in a complete disaster on that blog of hers? Maybe I should put a comment on her blog saying that SHE should do a reality post like this so I can feel better about my reality. *snicker*

6. Finding the Joy. Hand in hand with the issue of time comes the worthiness of what I spend my time doing. I love photography, it brings me a lot of joy. I put a lot of energy, mental, physical and emotional, into it. Even more so now that I've taken the baby steps of doing it as a business. So is the joy I get out of it worth the expenditure of energy -both for me and my family. The answer to this flip flops a lot for me. There's times when I think I should run full tilt with photography because you should do what you have passion for and there's time when I think I should make my little family and our happiness more of my passion.  Will the joy I feel with photography spill into other areas of my life and make us happier or am I just getting so busy that I'm losing sight of what's really important.

And  as Lily ended her post, "we do what we do." Life goes on. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Which right there makes me laugh, because I can never not laugh about that movie: the length alone, the crazy music, playing cards with Aaron and mocking that music"dowoowoo duh duh duh" hilarious!