Wednesday, January 16, 2008

I'm up

It's 11:30 pm. I'm awake. Apparently sleeping next to someone for 4 years has rendered me completely unable to complete a task I did quite competently on my own for the first 24 years. Thankfully, my sleep inducer is coming home tomorrow.

In addition to not having warm husbandly goodness the past 3 days, I've also been doing a bit of soul-searching. I've enjoyed my two jobs post-grad school well enough. I'm just feeling that there must be something else I'm meant to be doing. I don't know what that is. In all reality, I probably won't be doing much of anything for a few years, but still, it keeps me up at night.

My life is so overfull of love, contentment and blessing that I should be passing that on in some form. HR, while lucrative for us, never turned me on the way other things have. After having a child and doing some reading around birth/nursing/etc I've been fired up about helping women to make their own choices about how these events unfold. While I don't regret my decisions during T's birth, I often wonder if I would have made different ones if the doctor hadn't come in 30 minutes after we got to the hospital and hooked me up to a pitocin drip. I credit one of the night nurses at the hospital with the fact that I am nursing T today. Without this night angel, I'm pretty sure I would have given up. Could I be a nurse/midwife? Or a lactation consultant? How does one become a lactation consultant, exactly?

I'm reading a book about the founding of the United States. I never realized what a strange and lucky occurrence it was. It, like many other books I've read recently, makes history come alive in a way that 12 years of school never did. If I had it to do over again, I think I'd be a history major, focusing in American Indian or Hawaiian history.

Then I read about the genocide in Darfur (and all over the globe) and wonder how I can make a difference in a country half a world away. Somehow donating a few dollars just doesn't cut it.

I admire people who know what they want to be when they grow up. I've never felt that passion for something. Lately, I've been feeling a passion to do something ... I just don't know what.

Sorry to drag you all into my late night ramblings. I'm hoping that getting them out of my brain might allow me to turn off for the night. Good night. Sleep tight.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you should be a mentor, that is a great may to "think globally act locally" Many big brother big sisters programs gaurantee full college tuition to a child if their "big sister/brother" makes a commitment to them for two years, it is an amazing experience from what I understand and you can give a child the encouragement to go to colloege and better themselves that they otherwise would not get. Just a thought, i'm full of other community involved ideas if you ever want to pick my brain, working for a non-profit does that to you

Anonymous said...

Well, the good news is that you have time to figure it all out and I'm sure you will.

You might find "Lies My Teacher Told Me" an interesting read. The author discusses why high school history is so boring and badly taught. He covers historical events/figures that show some interesting bias in textbooks.

I just read the second edition and now I know why I didn't like history in high school.

Becoming an LC

 
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