The Life You Want...

I don’t know anybody really who will say they have the life they want.  It seems that pretty much all of us, without exception, have something in our life that is wanting...why is it so hard to want what we have?

And is this dissatisfaction with the life we have really such a bad way to live?

I have a great life.  I really do.  I have most of what I could want and more.  I have a great deal of love in my life, satisfaction, friends, money, kids, cats.  I have a very good life.  But...

There are changes I want to make and those changes are pretty drastic.  Where I live, what I do for work, and how often I am working.  And of course, there is that age old perpetual dilemma for me of really wanting to find a partner and not being able to for various reasons.

So does my desire to want to change my current life in for another one make me ungrateful?  Am I just ruining the great life I have by wanting something different than I already have?  How much should I accept all the gifts I have and how much should I not?

It is hard to sort through really.  How can you stop wanting what you don’t have, but really, really want?

I don’t know.  I am not having a great deal of success.  It seems I can want what I have for a period of time but then the same desires return and plague me once more.  And honestly, I do not know how to unstick myself from this loop.  I just keep doing the following:

Acknowledge I want to make changes, decide to make those changes, see how much work is going to be required to make those changes, feel terribly guilty for not being more grateful for the amazing life I have, deciding I cannot make the changes, finding peace and acceptance with the life I have, really enjoy the life I have.  And then in another few months, end up right back at the beginning again.

I am not really enjoying the loop anymore.

Is it possible to change yourself right where you are?  Can I make the changes I need to make, living right where I am?  Why doesn’t it feel like I can?

I have a good life, but if I am honest, it isn’t completely the life I want.  And the person who is mostly preventing me from having this other life, is me.  I am the problem...again, still.

At this point, I am not sure if I lack courage or fortitude or what the fuck is going on.  I just know I am stymied and as much as I convince myself I need/want to make some changes, there is an equal and opposing force that pushes me back into some sort of holding pattern.

I think it is really hard to sort out what is good for you.  I know what is good for others, I spend most of my time thinking about that.  What others need from me, what I might need from them.  But I do not, and have not, spent a great deal of time thinking about what I need from myself.  And I think I avoid that because it is painful to see me letting me down, again.

I know the life I want.  And it isn’t far off from the life I currently have...but I would be lying if I didn’t own that I feel stuck in patterns that I do not know how to get out of.  And it is painful to endure and I have figured out that my travel kind of makes this whole existential crisis worse...because while I am away, I am living pretty close to how I want to live, then I come home and feel very discouraged and disinterested in the life I come back to.  And again, I want to own that I feel like a total brat saying that because I HAVE a great life, it just isn’t the one I want.

Sigh.

I am mired in the rhetoric, the confusion and the feeling of being very stuck.  It is a trap I set for myself and now I do not know how to free myself.  So I do the only thing I can think to do: pray.  And then trust those prayers will be answered, likely not in the way I would like, but answered nonetheless.  And clearly not on the timetable I would like or require.

It definitely feels like hang time, that space between the prayer and the answer.  What to do while waiting for guidance, confirmation that you need to move things forward or not?  I know that true satisfaction comes from wanting what you have.  And I do, I just want a couple of other things too.

Again, still.

And I am not sure whether this particular crisis of conscious is my becoming or undoing.  The conflict I feel between doing what is right and what I want is killing me right now.  I am clear about what I want.  But whether that is the right thing for me, is the ass kicker.  I have historically wanted a lot of things that were a complete waste of time or a total disaster...

So today I can only accept I am in this place of dis-ease.  And just try to make that as comfortable as I can.  It seems l am going to be here awhile.  And the good news is I have been here many times before, and I survived.  I am absolutely ok.  Even though I am not completely happy.

Perhaps happy is overrated.  I will attempt to seek contentment today with the life I have and some gratitude that I have any life at all.

Again, still.