My sisters and I went out to dinner with my dad today, like we usually do, and I started to get really upset. I can't stand it when people start saying hurtful things to each other, putting the guilt trips on each other, bringing up old grudges from the past. I hate to listen to it and I hate to get involved in it. I didn' t say anything about it, but I felt like saying, shut up, you know, these people are your family, your flesh and blood. And my dad treats us so well considering how little we really have to do with him- I think he spent over $70 on dinner tonight. I feel like we're in one of those stupid movies about rich people- people who have everything yet are still unhappy because they are so emotionally disconnected and distressed over the boredom and lack of meaning in their lives. We're not even that rich :).
Anyway, I just felt sad. Even with my own family I still feel like an outsider, like I'm not good enough for them sometimes. I guess we get along well enough considering that we're so different and how the past few years have been. I don't think I can expect any more than what I already have.
I read something in a magazine today: "Failure's hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever."
It's from a book titled What Should I Do with My Life?, which might as well be the title of this blog. I have a simple theory about this, which I've heard reiterated time and time again, which is do what you love. Sometimes I get so discouraged about this, because what I love is writing, and from where I am now I am not headed in that direction. A voice in my brain tells me I'll never be a writer, that I'll never make a living at it anyway, and I'll end up stuck in some job. That doesn't have to happen, and I know it, but it will take work to get me from here to there.
And it occurs to me that there are a lot of questions I have asked myself to which I have already known the answers. So many times I've ignored those answers, too, and gone in different directions only to find myself in places I didn't really want to be in, but I'm finding them more and more now, listening less to the outside voices and more to the inside ones.