What I want to be when I grow up...

This year marks 10 years from my college graduation.  I don't feel like I have done much with my life.  I don't quite remember the exact plans I had for myself.  (although I don't think they went beyond the summer after graduation)  But I definitely didn't think life would happen this quickly.

I was newly married (to my first husband) and reveling in the fact that after 18 years I didn't have to go to school anymore.  I thought I would take a break, get a job in an office and then go back to get my Master's degree when the time was "right."  That time still hasn't come.
  
I tend to look at other people's lives and measure mine at their standards.  It's not fair - to me or them.  I haven't walked in their shoes, made their sacrifices or saw their choices.  I see with eyes from the outside looking in.  I need to stop looking out and look inside.  I know every new year I think about how I can make my life better, how I can stop making excuses, how I can make my  own dreams real.  But it seems overwhelming... just trying to take inventory of myself and figure out just what my dreams really are.

At different times in my life they have been different things.  When I was in college I saw my end goal as being a Religion Professor.  I didn't have a plan of how to get there, I kind of just thought things would fall into place (20 something me was kind of a dreamer... with no concrete plans).  I married for the first time in the middle of my senior year, my husband at the time put my dreams of being anything but his wife on hold.  I can't blame him, staying home and being able to do whatever I wanted at my leisure seemed like a good deal.  (It ended up not being such a great deal, one of my very first "Everything that glitters isn't gold" realizations)


After I left him I held a few random jobs to make ends meet.  It wasn't until a few years later that I became really passionate about makeup.  I have worked off and on in the industry for the last handful of years.  While immersed in makeup at M.A.C. my dreams included one day being a Trainer, working in a fabulous city and doing celebrity makeup.

I still love makeup, but I don't feel like it's my "calling."  I don't dream of the things I did back then.  I'm not even really sure what I want to do and time is ticking away.  I'll be 32 this year and I have no idea what I want to do with my life.  It's frightening.

I thought I would have it together by now, that I would be who I would be.  But, it seems that in my measurement of my own life I just come up short handed...

I am overly cautious and afraid to take the necessary leap of faith and terrified of failing.  I don't want to be wrong.  But in protecting myself from these things, I am also holding myself back from amazing opportunities that I won't even allow myself to imagine.

Disclaimer: I would like to clarify here that I don't think my life is "empty."  The last 7 years have been full of some of the most amazing things I have experienced: the births of my children, marriage to my favorite husband, a handful of businesses, travel and the experience of life in its extremes.  I am grateful for the hard learned lessons as well as the blessings.