Desire. Ask. Believe. Receive.

Given the choice would you choose to spend your vacation in a beautiful place but where your everyday activities involved ceaselessly running after your spirited toddler while your husband worked as a hired hand taking care of endless "quick projects?" Oh, and when you do get a break every once in a while an old man in the early phases of sinility barked orders at you and expected you to make his dinner and iron his tee-shirts and pillowcases.

No, me either.

I feel flat, affectless, aimless and awash. I feel frustrated with myself and unsure as to how to change it. I'm leaving for two weeks on Saturday; maybe a change of scenery will shake things up. Here's hoping. I enjoy my job, I really do, and I enjoy taking care of my house and my family but outside of that (and I know that's more than lots of people can claim), outside of that I really feel like I have nothing these days. I have no hobbies, no interest, and very few friends. I mean, I know I have friends but I have literally nobody that I can just call up if I get off work early and say "let's meet for a movie" or coffee or lunch or shopping or whatever. I think a huge part of that is that I'm incredibly boring, I have nothing to offer in the way of conversation these days as, like I said, I have no hobbies or interests outside of feeding, bathing, and playing with Suzie. My brain doesn't hold onto information in such a way that I can just skip into a dialogue with a person about any given subject--even if I know tons about that particular given subject--my quick recall skills just aren't there. I just don't have it.

My hobbies, for the past 15 or so years have been as follows: drinking (escape and unhealthy), men (escape and unhealthy and usually combined with drinking), reading (escape), and travel (escape and expensive). What gives, you know?!? I'm trying to come up with a hobby, something--ANYTHING--that interests me beyond those fallbacks. Something that I can afford and that doesn't take too much travel to get to and I keep keep coming up short.

John suggest hiking and he's right; I do love hiking. I love being alone in the woods (well, with John) and I always feel better about any given situation after taking a long walk in the mountains, but again with the travel--it's at least an hour's drive from here to anywhere remote and John and I are both working 6-day weeks--that leaves painfully little time for anything on Sunday except cleaning, shopping, and cooking for the week's lunches.

?!?!?!
!!!!!!!!

What to do? Other past hobbies:

Horseback riding--prohibitively expensive
Dance classes--a little too expensive, I am still really interested in the 5 rhythms thing though.
Gym--not really any interest these days
Cooking--with these thighs? I've lost 20 pounds this year and I'd really like to continue with that trend, thanks.
Cycling--actually that's never been a hobby but I am interested in it. I have weak ankles that don't lend themselves to running to maybe biking would be a good fit...

The other think I've been pretty down about lately is the fact that I'm really not great at anything. I don't excel at anything. I'm OK at a lot of things but how can I not be great at any single thing in the world. Have I just not discovered it yet? I find that hard to believe--I went to a liberal arts college for god's sake. I don't know. It's been troubling me for quite a few years now but I just keep pushing it aside. It really hit me last night though and it completely goes hand in hand with having no interests.

I need to quit this. I'm leaving in two days and the house is a mess and I haven't started packing.