I Don't Want To

I can relate to my two-year-old sometimes. Often I want to scream "NO!" and throw everything on the ground and stomp on the floor. But I don't.

All the grown-up stuff I have to do every day just gets old. Yes, I want to play, and yes, I want to dance, but I can't because I have to do the dishes, get us ready, and go to work. Followed by cooking, cleaning, laundry, more work, and bedtime. Ick. Boring and exhausting.

Work has been taking it out of me lately, more than I like to give. I'm a little stingier with my time now because of my other, more rewarding and demanding full time Mommy job. If I take a bite out of that, it all goes to hell, and also I just don't like it.

A 50-hour work week on a consistent basis feels like 100 hours, and I'm just not interested in living this way. Sometimes, you gotta get over the hump and do more work, and I'm ok with it. But I am not in the place where I can keep up with that schedule long term. And more importantly, I just don't want to.

I was just on a 36 hour trip to Atlanta for work. It's part of my job to travel, and generally I don't mind traveling, but now I just don't want to be away from my family. I also hate wasting time. If I'm going all the way to the other side of the country for meetings, I want them to be productive. I want to come home with decisions made and action items lined up like nice duckies. I want to spend only as much time there as necessary, and wasting precious time is about the worst thing ever.

I found myself in the mindset that I just don't want to be here. I don't want to do this. I don't want to hang out with a bunch of dudes that I work with but have nothing else in common with. And I don't want to get on a plane during a severe thunderstorm warning. I protest!

During this mind storm, a little nugget of wisdom came to me, and this is it:

You have to do this; you are already there. Accept it. The only ways to reconcile your circumstances are to accept it and move through it. Negotiations come later, but for now stay cool.

And also, don't make any rash decisions from this place, and don't be critical. That has always proven 100% not good.

Being on a plane during a thunderstorm is definitely not my preference, but it was the only way to get back to where I needed to be. Sometimes it doesn't really matter what you want, and there's nothing you can do about it but buckle down. And so I did.