Identity Crisis

WTF? Again I'm having one of my identity crises. How many of these must I endure in one lifetime? I could feel it coming on a few weeks ago and while I'm holding on tightly to my life, I can feel it building into a full-blown hurricane.

I've had many over the years, and in the end they help me successfully plan out where I'm going next in life. My 'most successful' identity crises happened when I was 22, just married and hated my job. I decided this was not how I wanted to live, and that I needed a 10 year plan. After studying First Things First I decided that by the time I was 28 I needed a job where I could work at home so when I started having kids at age 31 I could be home with them and keep my career going.

Now I'm 31, have 2 kids and work at home full-time. I have a great job, a nice house, time to go to the gym, hang out by the pool, knit, read, etc. But again I'm having an identity crisis. Feeling this upheaval coming I decided to purchase Eat, Pray, Love - the book just called to me. Last year I had contemplated reading it, but a friend read it and her review was pretty harsh... something like "the narcisstic whinings of a selfish little rich girl who dropped everything in her life to travel for a year". So far I can see why this friend had that opinion, but I don't necessarily share it. Elizabeth Gilbert's life is far from mine and I would not give up my family for a year-long trip to 3 incredible places, but I do understand the need to know myself. I just need to find a way to do it here in reality.

As I try to figure all this out for myself, here's a thought from the book I particularly like "... it is better to lie your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection."