:I Know No-tingk!:

Hogan's Heroes, anyone?

I'm just gonna put this out there...

I've got nothing figured out. Like I mean NOTHING.

Or at least, that's how it feels sometimes. I just feel like I'm a little kid, except the problem is, no one else seems to have my answers.

It's just hard not to feel like maybe you've lived your whole life with the wrong perspective or philosophy on some things... Like maybe you're expecting too much from life, and really, you just need to get over yourself and realize that it's even tougher than you thought.

Like with jobs, for example. On the one hand, I've got this sense that I should be able to enjoy myself in my work...to take pride in what I do... Maybe even (dare I say it?) do something I love. Really, though, when it boils down to it, I'm not even expecting that... As much as I'd love that, heck, at this point, I'd settle for a job that I was okay with, and working hours that weren't out to lunch. It feels like I've got either one or the other on the go here (either the hours or the job)...nothing seems to fit the bill of both.

Then on the other hand (and at the risk of sounding like the Father from Fiddler on the Roof), there's that view that everyone else seems to have an easy enough time passing on to me--that maybe I just need to work a job that I don't like for a while because the pay is good, and it might free me up to pursue other things.

Which, in the end, just ends up feeling like I'm being told to man up, get over myself, and do what has to be done, regardless of what it does to me as a person, or how it affects my spirit.

Maybe that's the truth, maybe not. Maybe I do have it wrong--maybe I'm somehow living out of a sense of entitlement, that I should be able to do the things that I am passionate about and somehow support my family that way...maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm bang on.

Either way, I have nothing figured out.

I'm not asking for someone to give me the answer, unless somehow you actually magically have it, in which case, I still don't know if I'm actually asking for someone to give me the answer.

But it's my wrestle right now... And it feels like it's taking over everything. I guess it makes sense that it would be my wrestle, and that I'd be sick of wrestling with it. I've spent the past five years working two jobs, at somewhere between 60-70 hours a week, depending on how things have gone. Doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else. And it feels like when I think I've got an answer, something falls through or proves itself to be far different than hoped for, and we're back to square one as far as my headspace is concerned. Don't hear me wrong: I love the job I work at the church, and wish I could be doing more of that. And my job driving taxi? The job itself is fine. I've really got no real complaints with it. But the hours are starting to be harsh. Sure, there are perks to how it arranges the schedule, so that I'm home during the day and whatnot... But is messing with my system to be up at night like that... And I think in turn, it's messing with my head.

It's one of those times in life when you realize that your perceptions growing up were wrong--things don't always make more sense once you've gotten older... Answers aren't necessarily clearer just because you're not a kid anymore, and your parents were probably more lost and confused by life than you ever thought they were. It just doesn't go and sort itself out for you.

Then again, I guess it wouldn't be much fun if it did, now would it?

Still, it'd be nice for some things...