Finding Your Purpose Is Hard

So here’s the thing.  Rob and I recently found out that our jobs have changed, and there will be less traveling and more of being home.  That had sent us into a tailspin the last couple of weeks. The best way to describe it is this, I was going a 1,000 miles an hour with the bakery and touring and then I wasn’t. I loved my bakery; it became who I was, and I was proud. I also loved my touring job; I discovered skills I didn’t know I had and I loved them. Both jobs were exhausting.   Both jobs I put in over 80 to 90 hours a week, yes a week that wasn’t a typo.   But then I instantly went to working zero hours a week, and it’s a hard adjustment.

My life is good, and I’m lucky I don’t have to work. I can spend every day looking for new coffee shops that have opened or ones that I haven’t had a chance to try in the five years I’ve lived in Nashville. I can sit there with a great cup of coffee and write. I can sit all day on the couch and read a book or watch a movie if that’s what I decided to do when I woke up in the morning. I have my shit together, for the most part, I’m just, as usual, searching for a purpose, and that is madding to me.

I know my kids still need me, they just don’t need me on a daily basis, and I’m getting used to that fact. Ali and I talk every day.  She will even occasionally come over and raid the fridge for my leftovers and Rob’s mind for advice and tell us stories about her student teaching and how it makes her feel old. I’m glad Ali is still only 5’2”.  Because when I hug her tight, it makes me feel like she is still in high school and not a grown woman shaping the minds of high school kids.   Raymond and I talk a couple times a week.  But if I want, I just need to pack up my laptop and write at the Starbucks that he manages.   Which is what he does while he and his wife (that in itself is a strange word to type, but more on the wedding in a few weeks) are building their wedding photography business. I get to see his face, squeeze it and him tight and imagine that he is still my sweet little boy and not this 6’4” married man. Both of my children like the bakery and touring, they were a large part of my daily life, and now they have lives of their own, and that is just weird.

I know I’ve written about this in the past, heck it’s actually why my whole blog started in the first place, but recently, like really recently, I’ve come to a conclusion. I think you are always searching for your purpose, and I’m not sure you every find it 100%. I think it’s because we are ever changing as humans, ever evolving and maybe what I need to be doing instead of always searching for my purpose is to learn how to sit and just be. Be in the present; be ok with the present while still looking towards the future and still remembering the past.  I am striving towards being in the moment and being 100% present in that moment.

Image Cred: pixabay.com