late bloomers

Can't think of a catchy first line.
This is a post about how lame my husband and I are together.

Also a reason why I shouldn't watch people's success stories on YouTube until after I, myself have had success. As per my post last week, there is far too long a list of things I enjoy doing accompanied by an increasing feeling of being left behind by my generation because I'm not actually doing anything about the things I like to do.

Confession: I never liked horses as much as I pretended to when I was a child.

The sister just younger than I was big into horses. She was also the preferred child because I was crazy and we didn't know why yet, so I felt strong compulsion to be first and be better than her. The day she announced she loved horses, I loved them more. (It didn't end until after I left for college, either. The day she decided to play flute, I picked it up and was playing at an intermediate level within two days. She decided to play bassoon instead. I never tried to keep up with her athletics, though. I got fat while she got soccer-chick thighs. I was a passive-aggressive sort of competitive, she was a knock-you-down sort.)

I watched YouTube videos about why Lena Danya and Happy D Artist chose to make art their career. Both of them said it was something they had been doing and loved since they were a child. I've been thinking about how I was as a child. I can remember some things. I spent my time riding stick horses, playing with stuffed animals, swimming in a ditch, crying so hard I passed out, keeping my little sister away from my own friends, drawing horses (well, more unicorns and pegasi than horses) and dragons, throwing fits where I would tear my hair out, playing in our sand box, riding horses, playing horses on my fists and knees until I got rug burnt knees, being so mad I bit my hands, tucking my shirt in and wearing a belt, being secretive about which boy I liked (it was only one, all through elementary and middle school.. one boy crush for 7 years), playing lion king off the top bunk where Scar would throw Simba's dad off the cliff, but you don't want to read a laundry list of my childhood activities. Just note that they are sporadic and random and centered a lot around something I didn't actually love all that much.

One day I realized I was lying to myself. I loved the clarinet. On that day, I gave all of my horse toys to my younger sister and never really played with them again. (I still doodled on all of my school papers, though.) My dream of going anywhere with the clarinet died with my college grades, tendonitis, and bank account balance. It's hard to go to college and get good grades when bipolar disorder has one by the throat. Pre-diagnosis problems.

All of which is leading to my point: I have no idea what I loved doing as a child. So I am an automatic failure as an adult because I'm starting from scratch 20 years late. I'm not good enough at anything to make a real career out of it and I'm not going to be a self-employed knitter. My husband is kind of in the same boat with me. He just switched majors two semesters ago.... to something he loved doing as a kid: writing. So he isn't as lame.

This has made me reconsider what I think of as "success". Am I successful because I actually spent the time to draw, paint, sew or write in a day? Or if I have my own fashion line of knitted sweaters (with cat motifs of course)? Or am I only successful if I have an enormous online following and collectors wanting to pay loads of money for my art? The latter is very appealing to me. In the scriptures, when the people are starting to become wicked again, one of the first things they do is "seek to get gain". Well, yes I am. There's extra pressure because I am the primary income and I'm not making any money right now. My back is still out of commission. I have a bad case of the "I can'ts". To be fair, my early life was not exactly a joy ride.

searching for my life

I'm probably manic. That is usually the only time I think it is a good idea to start up a blog again. Besides, I think my "internet voice" is unbearably annoying. Not a lot of motivation to keep going after I've reread old posts. I think this is the... 4th or 5th blog I've ever tried to start. I lack consistency. I'm kind of a flake about things, but in my defense I have not been really functional (mentally) until about 2 or 3 years ago and there is still another dead blog in the internet graveyard from that time period. How many of these thoughts sounds familiar:

"Well, this time will be different because..."
"I'll just pace myself..."
"Take smaller bites so..."
"I can be more consistent..."
"Because it's the new year and that magically means I have at least one or two solid months of goal-meeting before I peter out again. That's enough time to develop a solid habit. ...isn't it?"

I'm 25 years old. To me, that is too old to start new things if I want to be successful in life. These thoughts are strongest when I think of my friends (who are younger than I) who all have been married longer, have degrees or children or both and still manage a Pinterest-perfect life. These thoughts are coming to a head right now because two days ago, after knitting, crocheting, reading, studying scriptures, sewing and writing all day - on the couch because my back bummed out and I've missed work for 3 weeks - I realized, to my horror, that my day still felt empty. I still felt like I was missing something. My husband came home to me moping around and was just as surprised as I was to hear about my realization. The trickiest part is: I'm probably manic, but I have mixed symptoms so it could also be the depression talking, sucking the color and joy out of things I've loved doing my whole life.

The scriptures say "Study it out, humble yourself, then ask and ye shall receive." Paraphrased, forgive me, so I made a list of the things I love to do and rated them 1-10 according to how good I think I am at each activity. Top 5 were: sewing; crocheting; knitting; pencil drawing; and watercolor. And I felt disappointed! Why? I'm still working on answering that, but I have some theories. I haven't spent as much time writing as I have on other activities. Hubby says I should try that out exclusively over the next few days and see what happens.

I think I have to be ready to give up everything I love before I'll get more answers from God. That's what it feels like to me to humble myself. After my first list I started a second, very different-sounding one of things I am good at like "teaching" and "helping people feel better" and I felt like that might be going the right direction. But, you see the problem: if I have "seasons of flakiness" (aka bipolar disorder, I don't care if I'm medicated, there is still flux and flow) I probably shouldn't go into a profession where people have to depend on me all the time. Oh, darn, that's, like, life.


Hey, I wrote a thing.