The last couple times I’ve talked to long-distance friends who ask, “What have you been up to?”, my answer has been along the lines of, “Not much, but in a good way?”
I started a project to copy over all of my old blog posts from living in Greece into a PDF so that I can print it and read about my adventures in book format. Reflecting upon who I used to be throws my current life into a starker contrast than I usually observe. On the one hand, I love that I used to process nearly every day through journaling – something I recommend to counselling clients but rarely do myself anymore! – and I was sharing all kinds of information that I learned about or was thinking about. It makes me wonder if I don’t consider things on that deeper level anymore.
But also, maybe that’s okay?? My life used to be consumed with drive and ambition and the desire to DO MORE, BE MORE, PROVE YOURSELF. It was great for my 20s. There’s an aspect of that mindset that still feels magical to me. But now I’m 36, married, and I have a steady job with an appropriate paycheque (I could write 20,000 blog posts extolling the joy of being PAID A LIVING WAGE, holy cow, I went the majority of my working life without it like an innocent dummy). I’m a boring person now! And I have mixed feelings about that.
As I’m typing this in my bed, my 11-month-old kitten is attempting to give herself a bath but getting distracted by attacking her own feet. In the other room (this is an apartment in Vancouver, so there is just “the room I’m in and the other room”), my wife is playing multiplayer games on the computer while the eldest and best cat is sleeping in his cat cave. The sun is pretty much set. I spent the day driving to thrift stores in small towns outside of the city because I only had clients in the morning and I wanted to get out. I came home and read a book while walking in circles around our kitchen to get 10,000 steps.
This is my life! It is all rather mundane when written out in a paragraph like that. Tricia of a decade ago would have been appalled that this passed for a Good Day. But it super was. I made dinner for my wife, and we ate together while watching Adventure Time. I realized we were approaching not only our 1-year married anniversary but also our 5-years together anniversary, and we high-fived and congratulated ourselves on having properly made it. Before she could get up, I awkwardly tackled her/wouldn’t stop holding on to her, and then we play-fought and giggled before separating to our separate evening activities.
I feel the shift in me, where I’m no longer as concerned with the big Saving the World goals. I’m a counsellor, and I love my job and the varying levels of meaning that it provides to me. But I really find meaning in caring for my wife and my cats, in playing games with friends and attending birthday parties, in reading a good book and immediately picking up the next.
It Is Trish 