I have a very distinct memory of the spring when I graduated from high school. I was driving on a familiar road and happened to be at the top of a hill. I looked out over the city and saw all the green starting to emerge on the trees. I remember being sublimely happy and thinking that every possibility in the world was open to me. I could do anything that I wanted to do. I was 18, healthy, relatively intelligent, and every single door was open to me.
In the years since I've had this vision of a very large room with doors all around it. When I graduated from high school and was accepted to every college where I had applied, every single one of those doors was open to me. I could choose to walk through any of them. Over time and with choices made about what to do next, some of those doors started closing behind me. Some of them closed, but could still be opened with some effort. Other doors were closed, locked, and the key was thrown away. At this point in life I'm not sure that I ever get back to that big room from the hallway I chose to walk down with all its twists and turns.
Now that I'm officially starting into mid-life, there aren't very many doors open any longer. Some of them could probably still be opened, but not without consequences to my hostages-to-fortune (a.k.a. my family). It's a somewhat surreal experience to realize that I'm not one of the young ones full of hope and promise any longer. I see people in the sports drafts or serving in the military, and they look like they're 15. I know they're really in their late teens or early twenties, it's just that it's hard to reconcile how young they look compared to the person in my mirror when it still seems like just a few years ago that I graduated from college, got married, and started a family.
This visual has been coming back to haunt me recently as I go through what I suppose is a mini mid-life crisis. I think this was quickened by my father's recent death at only 67 and my concern about the legacy I'll be leaving behind someday. I try to take care of myself, so hopefully I'll have more time than my dad did to figure this out. But it scares me a little bit because he never was able to figure out what he wanted to do "when he grew up" before he retired. He had several different jobs that he really enjoyed, but finished his working life in jobs that were significantly less than he was capable of doing. And I'm a great deal like my dad. I really do enjoy the work that I do on a daily basis, but I've been contemplating a change in career. It makes me wonder, if I do this, if I try to step through a door that's not totally closed, but isn't really inviting me in any longer; will I regret it? Will I end up doing less fulfilling work? Will I ever have the money to retire or help my children with their college?
I want my children to have all the open doors that I had plus some, and some of those doors require payment for entry. But I also want to spend as much time as possible with them before they start walking through those doors, and with each passing hour that I spend working, that time erodes. My oldest is already 13; in only five short years she'll be finished with high school. I've actually struggled with this conundrum since the day she was born. Obviously I've never stopped working, mostly because it's never really been a financial option being married to a teacher; but also because I derive a certain sense of accomplishment from my work. But lately I've started to wonder if there are other ways I could support myself and my family. Could I work part-time? Could I work as a consultant? Could I sell my photographs? I don't know the answer, and I'm starting to get scared that I'm never going to figure it out. I'm frightened that someday I'll realize time has passed me by and I've made choices based on inertia rather than deliberation.
I realize this is a heavy post with very few answers. My hope is that I'll either figure something out and be able to make a change without causing problems for my family, or that I'll somehow figure out how to be at peace with my discontent resulting from always wanting to do better. The good news is that I am happy and very grateful for all the wonderful people in my life. I just wish I could figure out how to spend more time with those people while still supporting them financially. But I haven't figured it out in 13 years, years during which more of those doors were open than now. So I am worried that I never will figure it out. I guess that leaves trying to figure out how to be at peace with the doors I chose to walk through that have lead me to where I am now.
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