“Take a look at my attitude.”

I keep hearing this line lately, in varying words. It’s one thing when I read something somewhere, or hear it on the TV or radio . . . and it goes in one ear and out t’other. But when I hear it, then see it, then read it, then hear, read and see it, again and again and again, ad nauseum, then I figure it MUST be time to start paying attention. Maybe I ought to give that comment a bit of attention.

Ya think?!

Yes, I think. I should be thinking more often, actually. Here’s the deal. I work a full-time job. I live in the suburbs and commute, daily, to and from, nearly three hours of an already full day. I’ve never been a “morning person” but in the last six or so years, since being diagnosed with lupus, the effort to force my body to wake, cooperate, and not hurt enough to get out of the bed, nonetheless the house, at an hour I might’ve otherwise considered inhuman, has become an increasingly difficult task.

Add to all that . . . yes, there’s more . . . add to that the fact that my heart is NOT in my “day job.” Shlepping into an office designed to support the machinations of the federal government, while a noble thing to do and quite possibly someone else’s ideal, just doesn’t juice me up. I don’t identify with the technicalities of the environment. I’m always dreaming of how I could better use the time to support my real love—my writing and public speaking career. I do the former to be able to support the latter . . . until the latter becomes the former. Yet I find that I never seem to have the time to do what I’d love to do because I’m spending so much time doing what I have to do. Hmmm. . . .

Herein lies the problem. I’m wasting my life, wishing away five days of every week to enjoy my “reward” – two weekend days. How is that healthy? How can that possibly be fruitful, for either of my professional scenarios or my personal life? It isn’t, and it never will be.