WHAT AM I DOING ?.....and why does it matter

It is official.

I am having a midlife crisis.

Good news; I don't feel a need to buy a red sports car.
My car goal is to pay off the one I have: I love Hannah the Hyundai.

So what is this all about ?

It just hit me yesterday - but it's been coming on for a while.

A confluence of things I guess; turn the clocks back, first quarter of the school year over, a rapid visit upstate with the family, moving things around and OUT of storage; some shedding of goods and treasures that are no longer needed or treasured; beginning a new phase of my two year plan, reading day six of A Purpose Drive Life, by Rick Warren, and BAM. There it was.

WHAT AM I HERE TO DO - have I found out MY purpose yet, and why does it matter ?

Since I had had breast cancer, I thought I knew my purpose; to educate anyone who would listen to me about the Chemo Sensitivity and Resistance Assay and empower people to make well researched choices about health care. I have had opportunities to do that and its very rewarding.

But there is more.

There has to be.

There has to be more to life than rushing around, fitting everything into a schedule to pay bills and have a few bucks for brunch at the diner or libations on occasions with friends, ( both of which I enjoy beyond words), fill up the gas tank, and get back to work and run a treadmill. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I have been giving a LOT of though of where I am and where I will be in two, twelve and twenty years. I have come to learn that EVERY choice I make now is going to impact me for that long. It's rather daunting, actually. Cleaning and disposing of worldly goods has become a gesture meaning so much more. It's as if I have to make room for something; be ready for something...or is it maturity ?

Am I ready to get rid of what my mother not-so-lovlingly, but jokingly referred to as, "..those rags from high school," meaning my well heeled bohemian clothes and accessories. Is it the merging of those treasures from my childhood home and my life in NYC that is saying, "...ok, choices HAVE to be made, you cannot keep everything."

Or, is it just that there is too much stuff. How many tee shirts that I don't wear do I need ? Do I really, TRULY, need all those work out clothes that I don't work out in ? Just because I made that skirt in 1991, am I obligated to keep it ? I can sit here and REMEMBER when I made that skirt and why - does that mean I have to hang on to it ? Or, can I let it go...does it matter if I keep it or not ?

Is it the clutter of it or the fear of letting it go that will way on me ...and does it matter ?

Yes, it does. Within reason, you cannot build a new life with so much of the old one hanging on, hanging around and weighing like an albatross around your neck.

Ah - this is what I am doing - I am loosing weight; not on the scale, but on my soul.

Last week I deleted text message from summer 2010 - I hung onto them because I had thought they gave me joy to reread them; but realized, now, they only reminded me of disappointments. Let it go...they do not matter now.

I gave the thrift shop bags full of clothes, craft items and household goods at one time I believed I had to hang onto as reminders of past projects. No I didn't - I let them go - that was a week ago - and the exact list of WHAT I gave them is unclear, because, it does not matter now.

As a teacher, especially in these economic, "keep it cuz you may not get another " of it times, it enables my proclivity for pack rat like behaviors. But, as I see that I feel trapped by the weight of all of this stuff, I ask myself; "WHAT AM I DOING ?"

And as a matter of fact, in shedding the weight, the load, the excess and the goods, and giving them to others through various means, it does, indeed, matter.

A lot.