:: :: life blindness :: ::

So, when I was home last week my mom was telling me about something called a vision board. Have you heard of this? I sort of think she said she heard of it someplace famous, like on Oprah or in one of those books that every women on Earth has read except me, like Love, Pray, Eat (or whatever order they go in) but I seriously can’t remember.

Basically, a vision board is something I would never make. It’s a board where you put pictures (I guess you put picures… it’s about vision, right?) of what you want to enter your life and by doing this you somehow “open your life” to these things and then they come.

Like if you put a picture of money on your vision board you will start making more money somehow. Like maybe you’ll find a twenty on the floor of a public restroom.

Not that most people would probably want to pick that up.

ANYway, she was telling me that I should create a vision board, and if not a vision board then at least a vision.

Only I can’t figure out what my vision should be. I can’t seem to imagine what kind of life I’d like to have if I’m not going to have the one I have now, which clearly I don’t want to have because the life I have now exploded all over my insides and it’s still dripping ickily down the wrong side of my skin.

Mmm, yum. Nice image.

But so now I’m calling for more help from you, my readers loyal and twisted enough to have made it past my exploded, drippy insides to this here paragraph, the paragraph in which I ask you to help me out by expanding my notion of motherhood and what life as a mom can be.

I grew up very close with my mom and sister and my mom was home the whole time I was a kid until I was in fifth grade when she went to work only while I was at school. My idea of motherhood basically encapsulates a lot of playing, a little housework (sorry, mom, but it’s kind of true, right?), and that’s about it. I always pictured me and my kids building forts and making up dances. I imagined I’d be a stay-at-home mom and that I’d love every. single. minute.

I’ve never really known anyone who did it any other way. My friends’ moms were home with them. My mommy friends now are all stay-at-homes. I guess I always knew there were other ways to do it but I also always figured that the people who did things those ways were doing so out of necessity, not desire. And of course here I mean financial necessity even though I’m discovering there are other kinds of necessity. Whether I will need to work one year from now I have no idea, but right now I’ve discovered that I need to work because I am drowning here a little.

I hate to make it sound so dramatic and all, especially because I generally like my life. Go read my About Me page. It’s all true. My kid cracks me up or makes me go “aww” in that sweet way mothers go “aww” on an hourly basis. My husband is the most kick-ass husband there could ever possibly be. We’re financially stable. We’re healthy. I’ve got a sewing machine and lots of fabric and more ideas than I can shake a stick at. And the books? I’ve got so many books I don’t even know where to start reading now that I’m reading again.

Did I tell you that? I’m reading again. Three books in two weeks. It’s awesome.

So yeah. My life is pretty great. Only it turns out that right now, it’s not. I’ve made this life for myself that went and turned on me like that tiger (lion? hippo?) turned on Roy. I may be good at this life but it’s not good for me.

And here I am all blind… no vision of what else this life with Evan could look like. I know how Lorelei Gilmore did it on Gilmore Girls, but frankly I don’t think I’m going to be able to find a job as a maid at an inn where my small daughter and I can live in the tool shed outside. I mean, what do you even search for on Monster to find that job?

What I’m looking for is stuff that shows me a different image of what my life with Evan can be like. Movies, television shows, books, blogs, magazines… whatever. I don’t need the Huxtables where both parents are professionals but always seem to be home, right? I don’t need my vision board to bring me a million dollars tax-free, you know? No miracle lives. But I don’t want to jump into a vision board that’s going to give me that bathroom floor twenty, either.

And now the analogy has gone and lost its elasticity. I broke it. Great. But you know what I’m asking, right? You always know, Internet. That’s why I love you.