Words to live by...

I'd lost my faith in the world and everyone in it over the past few days, then I remembered this... feel a little better now.

You know you've grown up when...

It's kicked in.

That whole maternal, clucky, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at every child under the age of three thing.

I don't recall it happening gradually. No. It hit me like a bullet train and left me mangled on the tracks of life.

Now, normally such revelations wouldn't really worry me. It's more that I'm single, and now I have a primal, biological urge I can do absolutely nothing about.

I have a great career. I'm in a fabulous place right now. But if you'd told me six months ago that by the start of 2010 I'd be quite happy to get married, buy a house, have kids, get a dog, and live a life of domestic bliss - I'd have either laughed at you until I peed my pants, or gotten a migraine at the very mention of it.

The question that has got me thinking is a simple one: is this whole change of focus going to make me an even pickier woman on the dating market? Am I now automatically sizing up men to whether or not they would be father material? Am I now even less likely to find the man I want to spend the rest of my days with, because I am now looking for "The One" as opposed to "The One for Now"?

When all is said and done, it's not the thought of finding the man I want to grow old with that scares me.

It's that I know exactly who he is. And he can't find it within himself to be that man. That's what scares me.

Ain't it funny...

... how you'll be laid up in bed for a while, and find yourself so bored that you think to yourself "Hey, I'm gonna start a blog.". Then, during the course of that thought process, you realise you HAD one a considerable period of time ago, that you just got a tiny bit bored with?

Hmm.

Well, even with my terrible lack of dedication to the task, I am now seeing that there are people who get to quit their jobs to blog - I hate them. I would love a job that required me to stay at home in my PJs (or whatever attire I felt like for that day) and just type away. That said, when I'm on deadline for some of my journalistic stuff, guaranteed I will also have the worse ever case of writers block which frustrates me no end - I can only imagine what I'd be like if I had to churn out a couple of blog posts a day, and I could honestly think of nothing to say.

Anyway. I've been having a bit of an existential crisis. Not knowing what I want to do or where I want to be. It's turning into a bit of a December tradition for me. Don't get me wrong - aside from the creepy, creepy stalkers and stupid, stupid head patients (and obviously the small yet ever-present section of my patient population who manage to satisfy both criteria) - I really quite like what I do for a living. It's just that I like the thought of other stuff more some days. Like blogging. If anyone actually reads this rubbish that I am writing, they can rest assured that it's pretty much like I were telling you the story. While I can write like a journalist, all factual and knowledgable, I am also quite capable of flicking to the other side, where friends and colleagues will read what I've written and say "Wow - I could hear you saying every word... because that's exactly how you'd say it.". And it's true - why talk like a pretentious prat in a blog? Seriously?!

Anyway, back to the story. A part of me would dearly like to try the journalism thing. The PR thing. The working in the industry I love thing. The going back to my roots and teaching music thing. Is anyone else sensing my problem here? I have too many 'things'. There's pharmacist me, journalist me, music teacher me, and the me that would like to try something new altogether. Crikey. If only I had the multiple personalities to match - you know, in the style of "The United States of Tara" - then I could do it all and have a completely different wardrobe for each occasion. Now that actually sounds somewhat enticing...

So what to do? Head back to location A, or stay in location B? Or make a fresh start in location C, which has always held some appeal? Ahh, the decisions... this is why you shouldn't get in bad car accidents. You can't get out of bed for weeks on end, and it gives you too much time to think. Counterproductive in the extreme...