Shoveling Out from Under

I’ve just come home from vacation, three weeks away during blizzard season. I am digging myself out in every way in every sense of the word: work, housework, snow, snow and more snow:

More than snow, though, I feel like I need to shovel myself out from under my clutter-laden lifestyle and my soul-numbing job. I’d like to shovel myself to a lighter way of life.  

One night during our holiday, my daughters and I had dinner at PK Changs, a Chinese restaurant, and when I cracked open my fortune cookie, I felt like I’d been smacked upside the head.

“If you don’t build your dreams someone else will hire you to build theirs.” I sat and stared at it.

“Mom?” my daughter said. “What does it say?”

I thought for a minute.

“Uh, I think it says ‘get a life’.”

Somehow though, when I sit down at my desk, when I click open yet another work related email, I forget that fortune. I just fall back into line again, trudging along the path to nowhere. By which I mean: is practising law my life’s passion? Is it the work I can’t not do? Am I following my bliss or my personal legend? No no, no and no. It’s a job, and one that takes up an enormous amount of the available disk space in my brain, not to mention my time, life energy and money (don’t get me started on law firm overhead). Am I grateful to have a law degree? You bet. Do I occasionally bang my head on my desk out of sheer inanity of it all? You bet.

So whose choice was this? Mine. And whose job is it to find another job, another way of life? Mine. Will it happen overnight? Nope. Will I pick up my shovel now, and start digging my way out? Yup.

I read about minimalist lifestyles, about others who are dropping their jobs and following their dreams, about people living simply and happily. I close my eyes and dream. Now is the time. I began this blog with the idea of examining what’s worth having in this life and it’s time to get back to that mission. Wish me luck, or rather, wish me patient shoveling.