Something to Say

I've spent the past couple of months thinking that maybe I am going through some sort of pregnancy-hormone-and-HGTV-driven midlife crisis, where I want to pack my family up and move us somewhere exotic, like they do on House Hunters International. I've wanted to buy a vacation beach house. I've wanted to redecorate the house I currently live in, from top to bottom. I've wanted a new car, a new yard renovation, a new set of family room furniture.

Well, ok...the family room furniture was a legitimate need that we did follow through on. But everything else?

Not necessary.

Not possible.

Not happening.

And so, I've felt...stuck. And increasingly miserable.

I am miserable because I don't feel like myself. I am miserable because I am constantly mad about something. I am miserable because I know that I'm going to lash out at someone I love at some point during the day for absolutely no real reason whatsoever, other than the fact that I just don't know how else to react.

I am miserable because I just want these feelings to go away, and I don't know how to make that happen.

At this point, I'm starting to think my issues are all job related. I am just now realizing that, while I'm finally in the type of position I've always thought I wanted, I've apparently always thought wrong. What I've spent the last ten years of my life working toward, career-wise, doesn't seem like something I'm going to be able to sustain for the next thirty or forty years, since the very thought of going to work some days make me feel physically ill.

I'm tired. I want to stay home with my baby. I DON'T want to have to think about how I'm going to manage a full-time schedule for work, while also managing a full-time activity calendar for school-aged children, because let's face it...

That day will be here well before I'm ready for it. And I don't want to be in the same place, struggling with the same issues, when it DOES arrive.

So, I'm working on a plan. And in true Tara fashion, it involves putting everything off for a little longer, so I don't have to deal with it right now. I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing until December. I'm going to have my baby, and then I'm going to take all twelve weeks off available to me to recover from having that baby, even though six of those weeks will be unpaid.

And then I'll come back to work.

I'm going to see if what I'm feeling is hormone driven, which is what I think it might be, or if my job IS, in fact, sucking my soul dry, which is how I feel right now. If it's the former, then that's great. If it's the latter?

Then I've got about a year to figure out what I should have been working for over these last ten years.

Because honestly? I have absolutely NO idea.