Through My Eyes
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Legacy I�ve been thinking a lot about my legacy lately. I guess people tend to do that when they�re confronted with death and their 40th birthday. As I read my friend Sabrina�s obituary I was struck by two things. One, what an illustrious career she had and two, how she didn�t let it compromise her personal life. I�ve always had the career thing down pat. Just call me �miss overachiever.� I�ve put my heart and soul into teaching for over 16 years and it has been my saving grace, but at what cost. As my 40th birthday approaches I realized that my career was basically all I had. Don�t get me wrong I�m not saying that I don�t have a wonderful family and amazing friends, because I do. But somewhere along the line my inner drive to succeed in my career overshadowed my inner drive to develop long term relationships with the opposite sex. My career has been my refuge from all the storms at home: grandma�s illness, mom�s illness. It�s been my escape, well that and food. The more you eat the fatter you get and less you have to worry about dealing with the opposite sex. They certainly don�t deal with you when you�re fat. I�ve escaped for so long into my career and my weight that I lost sight of the things that were important to me. I sure don�t want my obituary to be all about my career. I want it to show that I was able to balance both a career and a family. It�s a long process to change long standing practices�Workaholics don�t know how to stop early, but I�m learning. I�m also learning how to focus on me, on loving myself for who I am and building from there. For the first time in a long time it�s all about me and not someone else. It�s very strange to focus on me; I�ve focused on others for so long. First step for me is dealing with my weight. It�s a hard one, but getting a handle on it will make all the other things fall into place. As I work on my weight, I�m also working on learning to deal with the opposite sex. Something I�m just not good at. I hate the meat market mentality and hate playing games. Be straight with me and I�ll be straight with you. It�s going to be a long painful process, but in the end I�ll have the life I truly want. |