A mid-mid life crisis. Maybe. But I’m pretty sure.

It’s a thing. I’ve heard about it and I timidly thought I might have experienced it when I was 25.

I mean, I got a new job, I ended my marriage, I uprooted my living situation and started dating ‘bad boys.’ It seemed like that was enough uphevel for one lifetime, at least for a decade.

Now here I am, a mere 5 years later and I’m contemplating turning it all upside down again! I was all for trying to hold true to the course and steady on this path, but then I learned that Elizabeth Gilbert, the very woman who with one book inspired a whole movement of women to follow their whimsy and internal impulses and ultimately gave them permission to become free of their poor confused husbands, then this same woman affirmed a whole other group of women (although not as powerfully) that true love does exist in second chances and not to hide from commitment and now that exact same public figure of a women is again divorced, a lesbian and writing about a horticulturalist (which I am not slamming — I actually loved that book) but good grief!

It leaves me to wonder, does anyone actually have it all together? Does anyone know how to sail only on calm seas? I’m thinking not. In fact, I’m thinking that maybe all of life is learning not how to battle one storm after another, but maybe how to put on a pair of rainboots and buy yourself a pug umbrella and go play in the rain.

Sure you could get hit by lightening or catch pneumonia from the cold but if you spend your whole life hiding away from inclement weather and scary possibilities then you’ll miss it. You’ll miss all of it.

This is as much an anthem and call to action for myself as it is a realization. My strongest impulse lately has been to barricade myself in my house and sleep like a lazy teenager. I haven’t felt particularly motivated lately and each day when I wake up still lacking motivation I think, “What’s the point? I could just go back to bed and it won’t make a difference.”

And maybe it won’t today or tomorrow even, but if you add up all of those tomorrows that I choose to sleep and not be alive and awake and present in the moment, then that adds up to a lifetime.

I don’t want to spend my life asleep.