I Want a New Gig, and other true confessions

Here I am, navel-gazing again. After eating an entire "like it" size of Cold Stone, several chopsticks full of peanut butter, two long sticks of "raw" chocolate truffle, and who knows what else is bad for me. There will be no recipe today.

I ought to be sleeping.

It's snowing outside again ... the second blizzard in less than a week. School is closed tomorrow, even though our offices aren't. It's unlikely I'll go in; after all, Ian is off, Steve will be off, and another day of commuting hell just doesn't appeal to me. It doesn't seem right--or even ethical--to expect your staff to go in, but keep your students safe.

I need a new gig.

On Sunday, I had come back early from a youth group meeting (where no youth showed up, much to our dismay) to a quiet house: napping husband, napping son. I tiptoed to the back room, and lay on the bed, feeling a little sorry for myself and my clogged sinuses, feeling like I really ought to be going to the gym despite my clogged sinuses, but feeling incredibly lazy. Half-propped on the pillows, I looked out the sliding glass door towards our neighbor's yard, snow blanketing the boxwoods, dappled sunlight playing in the tree branches above and on the curtains, and thought, I want to quit my job, eat, bake, cook, and write. It was as clear as that.

I know this is ridiculous, because one does not make money eating and baking and writing unless one has a catering business and someone willing to pay for reviews. Or a restaurant. Or is a famous blogger. But it sounded so appealing then. And thinking it, I felt my entire body relax into the idea. Like, ahhhhhhhhhhhh. There. Now I've said it.

We have been trying to have another child on and off for almost two and a half years now. I've lost two, both in January/February, one at three months. I've had no success at all to report for the past several months, I suspect partly because I'm not being treated completely for my hypothyroid condition, which can contribute to infertility. (I have other reasons to suspect this is the case: fatigue, hair loss, sweating, perpetually icy fingers and toes-to the point of pain when I'm outside in winter, weight that I can't get rid of no matter how often I go to the gym-and no, I don't sit and engorge myself like this every night, so it's not that. But I'm also tired of switching doctors, trying to find someone who will listen.) This time of year is hard for me; though women miscarry all the time, I feel oddly like I have amputated limbs, swinging around, ghost-like. There is a part of me that is incomplete. I find myself leaving work earlier than I used to, needing to GET AWAY, but also wishing there were something else I felt I could immerse myself in, maybe a new job, maybe motherhood ... but I can't even feel hopeful about that, knowing what I do about the tenuousness of pregnancy.

Another gig sounds so seductive right now. A gig that would leave me time to experience the things that make me happy, instead of just running through my life, doing. I watch myself, as if from outside my body, rush my child through the day from morning until night, even on the weekends. For a three year old, he is terribly compliant and patient with me.

I want to leave me time to be myself. For yoga class once in a while, where, oddly, I feel supremely content, waiting for the woman I consider my guru to start the class with chant.

I want to be happy.

But it's as if I haven't the foggiest idea where to start.