"Eat Pray Love" spoke a lot about balance. That is every parent's biggest obstacle.
How do you achieve balance and thus "happiness"?
Children. Friends. Family. Home. Career. Marriage. And somewhere in there, while tending to everybody else and their needs -you need to take care of yourself. You need to be happy doing all of this. You need to be doing all of this BECAUSE it makes you happy.
We enter life knowing that we have to check certain boxes along the way: high school, varsity, boyfriend, parties, job, marriage, house, children etc. What happens once you've ticked all the boxes? What do you strive for? What are you working towards? Now that you have everything.. do you just maintain it? Or does your life now stop and you sit back and watch.. and help your kids tick the boxes on the list that you've just finished?
I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. I'm not ready to stop and have my kids' lives replace mine. This is what my friends are describing as my "quarter-life crisis". My search for a box (still haven't found it).
For the past two years I have turned a blind eye to my own needs. I have pushed opportunities and people away because I am too focused on maintaining my stupid ticked boxes. And it stops right here. I need a new list, with empty squares. Turn to the next page, carry on. Move forward. Don't stop.
I know that certain things need to happen this year. I'm not sure in which order they will materialize, I just know that they need to fall in to place.
My mission for 2011 is to create a new list. For personal fulfillment, balance and thus happiness.
Karen Zoid asked an interesting question: "They say that in your 20s, you try and find yourself. Does that mean that when you're 30 -you'll be somebody else?"
Goodbye 2010. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.