Stress has always been a rather big thing in my life – especially when I feel like I have to be super human to meet the expectations of people around me. It’s not that I am necessarily needing to be so. It’s more that I feel like so many things in life need to be done to take away time from just being me. If I want the place I live in to be up to the standards that I’ve grown up with, then I need to spend almost every single minute of every day being there to take care of them.
I’ve been fortunate enough to be in a job in which I can get most everything done by the time I leave for the day. But even then, the act of going to work, as is true for so many people, sometimes seems difficult. But I love my job and I wouldn’t give it up for the world.
No, I think it’s the expectation that the people I live with have that when I’m home from work, I’m done for the day. That everything I’m doing up on my computer is just stuff I’m fooling around with. If I’m just fooling around, then clearly I have time to do twenty billion other things.
When I come home I do like to chill out, slip into bed with my netbook and read articles, read books, poke around that world that is the internet. But as this site is important to me, and as the other websites under my careful watch are as well, I still need time to get to those and keep them up to date.
But I think one of the biggest stresses of all right now is realizing just how permanent being where I am in life is. And it’s not the permanence that’s bugging me. It’s what I call “itchy feet”. I love to travel. I need to travel sometimes. When I was on my university’s ballroom team, we traveled often for competition. Since I’ve left university, I haven’t done much except the occasional trip to Boston and one trip down to Manhattan.
Seeing the world was one of the many reasons I became an anthropology major. But part of me is so torn up about the fact that I haven’t really gone anywhere with that. I still desperately want to see the world. I want to add more countries than China, Great Britain, and Canada to my list of countries visited. I want to go to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower. I want to learn to speak French. I want to see Morocco, and drink mint tea. I want to see Stonehenge and wonder at its origins. I want to see the Arthurian library in Wales. I want to write books and use that money to let me see the world. I want to see it from the eyes of others. And I want to see it with wide open eyes and a sense of wonderment that has never truly left me.
“You’re young,” I was once told. “If you’ve found the one already, that’s great. But hold off on having kids. There’s so much you should do now that you won’t be able to once you do. I’m old enough that I don’t mind having to stay in for a night when an opportunity arrises, but you still have so much ahead of you to experience.”
And she was right.
So no matter how much I say I want kids, it’s not time yet to give up on seeing the world. And hopefully, when the time comes that I do have kids, I will be able to do so and bring them with me.