Help me!! I am still a procrastinator

I have to write my thesis.

I feel like I am back in high school or college - once again crowned the queen of procrastination. This talent for finding anything and everything to do other than what you must do just does NOT go away - I have not forgotten how to waste time - it is kind of like riding a bike, once you learn you never forget. One would think with maturity and my advancing age, this kind of behavior would be firmly in my past but nooooooooo.......cleaning the grout-lines on my kitchen counter still wins over sitting down at my desk and actually getting something down on paper. Or in this case - into Word.

Even this blog is a tool of procrastination. But I am going to make this post into a step forward towards my future 80 page treatise.

My research is on Mid Life Transitions, be they career or personal, overlaid by the template of the Adult Life-cycle. Obviously this subject is quite close to my heart but hey - if I can figure out how to make sense of what has happened to me this last half decade or so, I would be a happy camper, or at least slightly less depressed.

So, now, for how this post, in fact how this blog, will help me towards getting the damn thing started: You are going to help me. I'd love to receive comments from anyone who reads this blog (I know, a sample of 12 probably doesn't qualify as scientific but who cares). What kind of comments? Well anything you would like to say about changes happening in your life, how they relate to where you thought your life was headed, how your goals and dreams may have changed as you get older and why.

That's for starters.

I am planning to throw out a question or a thought as I work through my research on this end and hopefully that will get and keep the conversation going.

What do you think? It is worth a try and besides - my kitchen is now spotless.

Comments

[Brigitt Heger]

Hi Mary,

I'm having trouble posting comments on your blog - but here goes.
20's - very ambitious, did a M.Sc. in Criminology with hopes of being a 'celebrated' criminologist with a new theory on victims of crime. Then I met my husband and he's also very ambitious - maybe more so than I am and of course with his business background, he was going to 'make the money'. We got married and I got pregnant right away. We moved to the US, where I couldn't work. So my very weak career became obsolete!(late 20's/early 30's). After 10 (I think) moves, I, of course, cannot have a career, so my career has become my 'children'. Sometimes it's fine - other times, I'd hang myself!!! ;)
Sometimes I wish I would have kept a 'career' or some type of job going, but yet, with all the moves and Paul's career taking him away 50% of the time - I just felt like I could handle being a working mother with a husband 50% away of the time - with no support system.
Although, now I'm at a cross-roads where my kids are getting older and would like to go to work, although I have this fear that 'I know nothing'! What do I do? Where do I go? Who's going to hire me? I haven't worked in 16 years!
Those are my issues right now!
Hope you get my e-mail!
Talk soon and good luck with the thesis.

Brigittxx

PS: with regards to you're previous post, I too, now am on little helpers - they've kicked in and I'm feeling better. Maybe it's that 'time in our lives'? Who knows!?

[mary]

Thanks Brigitt!! Your shared thoughts are EXACTLY what I need and in interested in hearing for my research.Your crossroads is key to what I am exploring. Maybe I will discover some tools and answers to help you and others at these intersections. As for as the little helpers - I am beginning to regret kissing them good bye but a girlfriend suggested hormones so that may be my next try. You are right - it is the time of our lives but it is not so easy to manage. xxxMary

[Carrie Dern]

Mary, thought I would share a "crossroad" that my mother-in-law, Fran, is at. Today, her best friend from childhood, Dottie, came to visit her in the convalescent home. I overheard them talking. Mom described how she had envisioned them, "old and gray, walking down the street together, just like the old days, chatting and laughing. And now look at me, here in this bed I can't get out of. This is not what I imagined would be my life."
Shortly after, Dottie came out of the room and fell into my arms in tears. She had just said good-bye to her very best friend.