Just keep going! You never know who you are positively impacting by not giving up.

I wonder if I am the only one who can rattle off a million things I need to be doing or get done and manage to only get somewhere between 0-1 of those things done in a day even when I technically do have time.

I really thought that once I had more time and the flexibility you can only dream of….I’d be crushing my to-do lists and pretty much just conquering the world daily. Right?

Wrong.

Sometimes I blame it on my ADHD tendencies, and I’ve found that it can be really helpful to go on social media sites that have groups of people who understand. Memes poking fun at being forgetful and having 78 projects going at once – hit home. I feel less alone. It’s easier to laugh at myself instead of feeling like “what the **** is wrong with me?” You feel me.

I used to declare that I would never work one singular day passed my 25 years of state government service. It literally blew my mind all the people I knew that chose to keep working. As I got older, I realized several things. One being that insurance is a real bitch and you kind-of have to have it. It’s ridiculously expensive to get unless it’s through an employer and the older we get the more we seem to need it, you know? So, once that sank in, I understood that all those who were single or had too much time between retiring with 25 years and the start of Medicare really were in a tough spot. Fortunately for me, my husband didn’t have any plans of retiring early in his 50s like I was going to be able to do and that meant I could focus on that 25-year goal and prepare to do — nothing! That is truly what I thought I wanted. The ability to do nothing, all day, every day…you know, if I wanted. I dreamed of being able to write when I felt inspired and learn how to do more arts and crafts—OR just sleep and binge Netflix. Either way, it legit sounded like a dream.

I looked forward to the day that I was one of those people out walking during work hours that I may or may not have cussed/fussed about how “it must be nice,” or “get a job.” Yeah…. I was a bit ruthless when it came to how I felt about anyone else getting to enjoy life without being chained to a desk and a boss.

Weird how life can put things in perspective for us. I am so very blessed that I am currently not worried about meetings or having to ask off for something or any number of things associated with my former position. So it would seem I should just be bouncing off the walls with happiness and my biggest concern could only be to not flaunt my freedom too much.

What I didn’t expect is to feel a bit worthless some days. Now the tricky part is I alone am responsible for deciding if I want to have a productive day or not – and yet I can still manage to feel down when I start wondering if I am actually contributing to society or need to tighten up and go find a “real” job.

Again, I would have laughed you right on out of a room if you had tried to tell me a year ago that I might have these feelings when I have only ever: gone to school, worked my tail off to get great grades and then right on to working full time for 15 years straight (through 3 pregnancies no less.) Little did I know even fabulous freedom is a big adjustment. Especially since one of my favorite hobbies is sleeping. Those of you who may have suffered at any point from depression, you know what I mean. There is something hard to explain about the joy of getting to sleep more and the guilt I feel from sleeping too much.

All of these things lead me to questioning myself and asking, “What exactly is it that you want then?”

The answer is that I don’t know most days and maybe that’s okay. Maybe some days I feel like I have a plan and other days I feel like I jumped ship from the plan I was supposed to be following.

Some parts of myself remain “on-board” with my situation while other parts are similar to former snarky me who was a bit bitter about anyone who didn’t have to work full-time. What I think it all boils down to is that I feel guilty. Guilty for not being stressed and guilty for not having some of the same worries I used to have.

I feel like maybe I haven’t earned the right to be in the position I am in and that it just seems unfair when I wish I could give the same freedom to people who likely worked much harder than me and will continue to work much harder for many more years. Then I have to remind myself that it’s not like I won the lottery or robbed a bank to be able to stop and enjoy my passions – I lost my rock, my dad.

That’s a pretty steep price to pay for anything. A cost I would never pay had I been given the choice.

I’ll leave you with these final thoughts that I try to remind myself of every day. While many things in our life are the product of our own choices, life jumps in and ruffles everything up for everyone. Nothing ever really goes as planned and the old saying really is true when it says that it’s much less about what happens to you in life than it is how you react to it. How you learn from it. How you potentially help even just one person feel less alone by sharing your experiences. If you are the one person who read this piece and felt even a tiny bit better about yourself and your own thoughts – then maybe, just maybe, I did accomplish more in a day than I thought. Likely, you also accomplished more than you give yourself credit for. Just keep going and be the light within the cracks of (your own) life.