Is This What They Call a Midlife Crisis

There is a girl that lives inside my head who I really admire. She's compassionate, talented, gracious, witty, confident and capable. She looks a lot like me, but she towers over me in strength of character. She's one of those people you'd like to hate, but who is so charming you can't help but love her. I spend a lot of my time and energy trying to mold myself into some reasonable representation of her.

Perhaps that is why I love making New Year's resolutions. I feel inspired and excited about the changes I plan to make in my life. I like to pretend that this year will be the year when I get a little closer to the mirage of my perfect self.

As I pondered what items to add to my to-do list this year, a strange thing happened. Instead of bringing the of the happy buzz of encouragement I expected, the thought of adding one more unrealized expectation to my seemingly unending catalogue of failures weighed heavily on me. And more keenly, I felt the investment of time was one that I could not afford as I am already operating on a severe deficit.

This time shortage is really an enigma to me. I don't feel like I do anything terribly important or productive during a typical day. I don't have a high-powered job. I'm not really what one would call a Super-Mom (you know, the type that has fun, enriching activities for their children all day long while somehow managing to keep a perfectly neat home, make a 3 course dinner, volunteer at the local homeless shelter, and read the NY Times from cover to cover each day). Mostly, I (hardly) manage to maintain a steady baseline of quasi-productivity.

I decided to spell out all the amorphous expectations I have for myself. I won't bore you with the banality of the items on the list, but to give you an idea, after reviewing the list my husband asked me if I had inadvertently omitted restroom trips. Were these mundane tasks really causing so much stress in my life? Could so much boredom really cause my stomach to churn by its incompletion?

I considered the list. Not much could be excised with out great sacrifice on the part of family members (grocery shopping really is essential, they all assure me), and some of the listed items are deceivingly time-consuming (i.e. physically caring for the children: one must also consider this includes providing an impromptu bathing when yogurt mysteriously splatters across the dining room). But most alarmingly, the few things on the list that I actually like doing were at the bottom of the priority list and often are the first casualties when time gets tight.

I finally came up with a few ideas that hint at making things better...you know: enhance efficiency on the most boring and routine tasks so as to free up more time for the more enjoyable options, wasting less time procrastinating undesirable activities (read: not signing into facebook or searching craiglist just "one more time" in case someone listed the serger of my dreams during the past 10 minutes), etc. But really, those strategies just seem like a diversion from the real problem: my life is dull. So dull I couldn't even bring myself to write Christmas cards this year.

It's true. I've become a typical boring thirty-something looking for a little pizzazz in life. (And not the type of pizzazz that comes from your two-year-old pooping on the kitchen floor. Side note: Jimmy-John wanted me to blog that story and entitle it: "Goose didn't lay THIS golden egg!" I laughed so hard, I almost regressed on my own potty-training.) I need something to get my heart racing. I need an interesting response to the question "So, what have you been up to lately?"

So, this leads me to my big question: Does any have a motorcycle for sale?