Asleep At The Wheel

Your 20's are a time to make something of yourself. You set out into the world and the movies tell you it's the time to find your footing in life, the time to gather interests, act on passions and test the waters so you can settle down later on.

I left college after two years. I'm a quitter. I had no reason to be there and little desire. I wasn't prepared and I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, so it just felt like I was wasting time. I went to school for photography and it was during the exact few years that the world made the switch to digital.

We were declared to be the last class to

learn with SLR cameras (you know, the kind that take actual film), and that's not what I wanted.

I had grown up with a professional photographer for a Father and had a darkroom in my basement. I knew how to work with film and I wanted something different, something new. I wanted a challenge.

So I left. I was bored and at that point I didn't know if I could make a go at being pro without digital knowledge, knowing I'd have to learn it all on my own after I paid a ridiculous amount of money to get an "education." See: quitter.

For the next several years I bounced around the country looking for something to grab hold of. Waiting for something to catch my interest. My friends knew they wanted to be architects, doctors, lawyers, and teachers from the moment they set foot on campus, but not me. I was still clueless. I had lots of likes. I liked cooking, I loved baking, I like saving a buck and doing something myself, and I loved the process of creating. With paper, with wood, with paint, with a pile of old paint chips. Nothing I did was great, I wouldn't land any gallery shows and the underground arts and crafts movement had yet to get off the ground (which would later be the perfect showcase for my style of creating and crafting). When it finally did I would later find myself saying, "I could make that... but I choose not to." Like it was some sort of elitist badge I wore to tell everyone that I was awesome, but my time was more important than sitting around and make cool plushies all day. Little did I know I would later yearn to be one of those crafters, content with what they did, because after all they were actually doing something.

For the next decade I stalled out. I spent my time being good enough and never actually doing anything. Well that's only partially true. We'll say for now that I didn't have the drive to make that part of my life succeed. In the mean time I had gotten married and was attempting to learn to clean a house and keep things in order. It was a new challenge and I welcomed it with open arms. Which was of course before I found out I was really horrible at it.

I'll be the first one to admit that it took me far too long to figure things out. To get a routine and to really stick to it because you cared, not because your bathroom might swallow you whole if it wasn't cleaned today. My husband and I moved for work a great deal (remember kids, being an artist means you go where the money is), and each time I would get the hang of the routine at a new house, it would be time to move again. Because of this, I perpetually sucked at all things a wife should be doing and my frustrations for lack of knowledge about such routines made things worse. That said, I was grateful for the adventures that we had together moving around the country, even if it meant I found it difficult to keep up with new wife-like responsibilities.

Wife-like responsibilities. That's probably a ridiculous phrase. The only responsibility you truly have as a wife is to love unconditionally and try your best each day to fall in love all over again, which should have made everything else go smoothly. Not the dishes, not the laundry, and certainly not walking the dogs. That said, it wasn't how I felt. I quickly became overwhelmed by my inability to be an actual adult and take care of a house, home, bills, all that stuff... and I felt like I was dropping a ball that I never really had a hold of. I had to of been letting my husband down and I was for sure letting myself down, but there is no book at the local shop called How To Not Suck At Being An Adult. I know because I looked.

I had this magical idea that when you get married everything gets split 50/50. That you're partners in crime through and through and I had some weird expectation that we would grow up and figure stuff out together. That couldn't have been more wrong when you're the one who works from home and the responsibility strictly falls on your shoulders. For years I felt apathetic towards adulthood and almost as if something would one day change, like a growth spurt and I would suddenly "get it." We wanted a fun married life, we wanted kids, we wanted a big house project, but paying property taxes, buying cars, those were all scary. It was far too easy to push everything till the last minute and panic when things had snowballed and I always felt like I never had a moment to stop and figure things out.

It was during this time that I realized I had faded. I used to be a bright star that was full of ideas and passion and it had all gone by the wayside. I had been so busy trying to keep up and being frustrated that bits of me fell away. I had a wonderful husband, great pups to play with and fun living spaces in which to create and I had turned into the shell of a person I had previously been.

Was marriage the cause? Absolutely not. So please don't misunderstand. The groundwork that had been laid in my life was shaky. I didn't finish school, I didn't get that chance to figure out how being an adult worked. I didn't have that drive that so many pick up and learn along the way. Was it because I didn't have any? Was I destined to suck at life from then on out. Short answer — yes. That is until now.

Now, like now now, I get it. I get it all and I'm ready to take on life the way I should have been living it for the last decade. My apologies to those that I have let down, to those who might have looked on with worry or concern. It wasn't my intent to falter and maybe I didn't. Maybe this is just the path that my life needed to take in order to be amazing today... and tomorrow. Because I will be — and not just on the inside like your parents tell you when you lost your first soccer game because you scored a goal for the wrong team.

For my husband, for my kids someday and most of all for myself.