wanted: golden slumbers
Want to hear something kind of mushy and pathetic? The husband was out of town the last two nights, therefore I couldn’t get to sleep. I guess when you sleep with someone most nights for 10 years, not having them next to you is distracting.
Wednesday night, I tossed and turned until after 2 a.m. and didn’t have a very restful sleep. I woke up a little bit later than I wanted to and when I reached for my glasses on the nightstand, I couldn’t find them. I started cursing my cat, because he occasionally takes it upon himself to nudge my glasses onto the floor, which is really just kind of mean considering how bad my eyesight is.
As I looked around, I realized that everything looked very strange and it took me nearly a minute to realize that the reason my glasses weren’t on my nightstand was because I never put them on the night before. And the reason I never put them on is because I never took my contacts out. And the reason everything looked so strange is that I’m not used to being able to see anything first thing in the morning.
So, summing up: tired, squinty.
Before he left, the husband and I had a pretty good conversation about our direction in life. I don’t know if I can say that any resolutions were made, but it was a far more productive conversation than the one we had the other night.
We’re struggling to adjust our perceptions, I think. We agreed that things beyond our predicament are changing. If the economy recovers, it won’t be the same.
We both grew up steeped in the ethos of, “If you work hard and go to school and keep aiming high, you’ll be fine.” None of our parents went to college. But they got decent jobs and worked hard. While they did okay, they struggled and believed that if they had gone to school they would have been in much better positions in life. Building some savings, not having to worry so much during hard times, and being able to set money-related goals and meeting them. The husband and I were never interested in becoming rich, but seeing our parents worry about money so much and the strife that it caused made us resolve to do whatever we could to not live that way. We were going to take off from the foundation that our parents provided and end up on a higher plane.
What we’re realizing, REALLY realizing, now is that it’s not just our resolve and hard work that controls our fate. It may end up that our investments in our education were riskier than we thought. It may be that they/we weren’t as successful as we just knew that they/we were going to be, that we weren’t on a voyage toward financial security, but instead taking a gamble and crossing our fingers. And, you know, I guess it’s okay that we might fall short of our goals.
But we also agreed that things could be much worse for us. We could have no education, we could be stupid, we could be without families that help us any way that they can.
Last night, the baby and I ate dinner on the porch because it was too hot to eat inside. Afterward, he wanted to take a walk up and down our street. As we got to the end of our block, he managed to convince me to keep walking down to our main street and get some ice cream.
“Let’s play follow the leader!” he shrieked as we headed back home. I imitated his hops and robot moves and then it was my turn. I led him in the Ministry of Silly Walks walk, which is kind of difficult to do uphill.
July 16th, 2010 at 11:05 am
My husband and I have been talking a lot about education as well, his not mine. I have a college degree, that I earned in the usual way, right out of high school. My husband has been struggling to earn a degree for 15 years. Recently, he made a really solid effort at finishing up his Associates, but it was too hard and the outcome uncertain. For now, he is going to take another break and focus on making money at the very secure job he already has. We are so lucky that he has this job and we need to focus on the positives rather than the negatives.
I keep repeating this mantra to myself:
Success means getting what you want. Happiness means wanting what you get.
July 16th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
I have a University degree and two college diplomas, while my husband has only a two-year college diploma. He earns more than double my salary. So, I’ve also been finding lately that my big education wasn’t really money well spent, despite the importance my parents deemed it would be. Still, I’m optimistic that it will all pay off someday.
Also, silly walks = awesome.