Small Dreams to Live Big

Baby L and I have a routine established: get up around 10:00 (why does L sleep so late? –I guess she got my genes for that!); put L in her fish seat while I eat breakfast, check email and facebook, and move on itsyourturn.com; take L out of her fish seat after 15-20 minutes when she starts to get fussy; plop down on the couch with L to feed her and watch TV, which often is House Hunters and other HGTV shows; feed L cereal or carrots (other foods soon to be introduced) around noon; do some housework; watch more TV, do stuff on the computer, and play with L and feed her more; lift weights while watching Dr Oz or Tyra (she’s actually pretty cool for a supermodel); watch more TV, do stuff on the computer, and play with L (and perhaps feed her more) until K comes home. Yes, my days are filled with way too much TV – I need to change that somehow.

Today on House Hunters there were two episodes with people looking for condos in NYC. I got a pang in my heart when watching; I have always wanted to live there, at least for a few years. It got me to think how I used to dream big when I was younger. I would fantasize about being a famous artist in NYC or an actress in LA. I don’t really have such fantasies any more – they left me many years ago. I suppose I stopped dreaming when I decided to abandon studying art. I often wish I would have stuck with art, just to see where it could have taken me. But then realistic thoughts set in: I probably would be stuck in some lackluster art career (I am no artistic genius as you can see by my post Life in a Box) and I would not have K or baby L. I might have some other baby, but I look at baby L and realize she never would have existed if I had made other choices in life. This helps put any regretful choices in perspective.

I would like to regain the ability to dream big again someday, but don’t know if it is possible. I think it becomes more difficult to dream as we get older and more aware of life's constraints. Also, we get more set in our ways and it does not seem possible to start anew when in middle age. My dreams now are smaller: a remodeled kitchen, a room just for our pet chinchilla, a remodeled bathroom, an entirely new house, vacations to the beach, et cetera. At times, like today when my thoughts flew to life in NYC, these dreams feel too small. However, when I try to dream big, I just can’t because I don’t see how it could work. We have financial, career, skill, and habit constraints. How could we find jobs in NYC to support ourselves? It would be great to live in another country, but how could we find well-paying jobs abroad? It could be fun to start a business, but what and how? If we got out of the “standard of living” box, perhaps we could do something crazy, but I don’t think we ever will.

Instead we are living in a place that is about as far as NYC as you can get: population 8,000 with no good restaurants and Walmart as the major shopping venue. We have a museum that is open only half the year and not much else culturally. There is church, but we don’t do that; such a place has just never felt like home to me. I try to bring myself back to reality and think “after a month or so, on a day-to-day basis, how would life in NYC differ from life in bubbaland?” The realistic answer is “not much.”

There has been a show on PBS called This Emotional Life that is relevant to how I have been feeling today. The show talked about how bad humans are at judging what would make them happy in the long run. We are not good at this because we are overly influenced by how we’re feeling at the moment and also very good at acclimating. Right now I am feeling a bit bored, so I imagine that life in an active city would make me happy. But, tomorrow I might not be bored and thus might not so strongly desire to live in NYC. Also, if we did move to NYC, I am sure I would acclimate fairly rapidly and be left with spells of boredom after the initial novelty had worn off.

It has been a recurring theme for me to think that a change of place will change me. But I have come to know that it will not (at least without a HUGE effort). Back in high school I realized this. I was very miserable at school and my parents looked for an alternate school that I could attend. My first choice was to attend the arts high school in Milwaukee, but that was apparently too far away so my parents came up with a Catholic all-girls school - initial reaction: "yuk!" But I tried to have an open mind about it because my current situation was so miserable. I thought that maybe an all-girl environment would be better since there would be no boys to bully me, but I worried about how cliquey girls can be. In the end, I realized that the only way the change to that school would work is if I reinvented myself in the new environment – I did not feel that I could do that at the time, so miserably stayed in my old environment.

Thankfully I am not miserable today, just bored from time to time. I have ideas for things to do, but they need to fester for awhile longer before coming to fruition. My ideas are simple nowadays…listen to audio books and do one of my collages. I am trying to appreciate the simple things in life, so am coming to terms with my small dreams.