rue-madame's Diaryland Diary

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Throw something at the wall and see what sticks

I�m sure that when I posted my �potentially life changing� things the other day, I must have sounded like an insane person. Who decides to apply to graduate school at the same time that they�re considering fulltime work at the same time that they�re considering getting pregnant and documenting all of it in a brand new blog?

A crazy person, that�s who.

My theory is that I�ve just been floating along, letting things happen and if I don�t take some action�ANY action�I will float my way into old age and wake up disappointed in myself. There�s so much more in life that I want to know and learn, and if I don�t start now, then when? I�m no spring chicken.

The last ten years have not been so bad. If I could summarize them, I�d say that I:
- gained experience and professional competency in my chosen field, made good contacts and worked for some impressive companies and smart people. I won awards, and my work was published.
- deepened my relationship with TA
- realized my profound need for a dance class surrogate (in my case, yoga) to feel connected to my body and to feel sane
- travelled to some wonderful cities and countries
- lived in interesting (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris) and not so interesting places (San Jose, New Haven)
- made new, really awesome friends

There are a lot of crap things that happened too, but I don�t feel like listing them (I fear they might be more numerous than the good things? Or maybe this is just my pessimism?)

The next ten years are critical. I�ve painted a picture in my head of what I want my life in ten years to be, and it is different from my life now. For one, I don�t want to be a struggling graphic designer, living check to check, just scraping by. I want a career that takes advantage of all of my interests, my trilingualism, my two passports and my understanding of design�graphic design is awesome and I love it and I think I�m good at it, but I�m tired of being called in to �decorate� at the end of the process. That is so BORING.

I don�t want to live cut-off from friends, or if I do live far away, I want to have the means to just jump on a plane and not worry about finances. I actually want to have pied-a-terres in two cities, and toggle between the two.

I want my life with TA to be less about errands, balancing checkbooks and borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and more about adventure, curiosity and challenge. If that includes a baby, that�s fine; if we don�t go down that road, that�s fine too.

I�m sure the job boredom thing has to do with 10-year burnout, working by myself, lack of outside stimuli. The being cut off from friends thing is pretty obvious, well, since, I�m cut off from friends (physically anyway--I do talk/email/chat with at least two people every day.) And the relationship stuff has to do with realizing what an amazing human being TA is and trying to not to take his unassailable wonderfulness for granted.

Thanksgiving is as good a time as any to take stock, I guess.

2:21 p.m. - 2006-11-22

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