everybody's working for the weekend

I feel that for the past several months, I've been existing simply to reach Fridays. I think, Ah, Friday. We'll spend some quality family time together. We'll run some errands. I'll get stuff done and feel relaxed when the weekend comes to a close. So, yes, we do spend lots and lots of quality family time together (I desperately cling to that in these few months before our family dynamic shifts in a way I'm still not sure I'm comfortable with or ready for) and we do run a few errands, but I haven't felt relaxed at all in a very long time.

We somehow manage to wander around, doing little errands, but neglecting to go grocery shopping (which lead to me eating some very questionable left-over couscous for dinner last night). At the end of each weekend, I feel myself longing for just a bit more time.

A couple of weeks from now will mark the first time in two-and-a-half decades that I've gone a full year without being a full-time student. I took off one semester after Pic was born. The plan was for me to take an entire year, but I wasn't capable of taking a full year.

I need to be busy. I need to be doing. I worry about my inability to just chill out, to spend some quiet time figuring out what to do next, but bills keep coming and life keeps moving and I feel at a standstill. (I'm pretty sure I sound like I just contradicted myself there. It is definitely possible for me to be at a standstill in my life and feel not at all chill at the same time.)

When my hours aren't filled, I am at a loss about what I should do, so I shut down. Not good. (Probably also not good is my sleeping something of an average of four hours a night when I was a grad student/teacher, but I (barely) survived that.)

So, for now, I feel that I'm muddling my way through the week, hoping for the weekend when Cardo will be off and available for me to pester full-time for two whole days. I'm sure he truly relishes this.

In the past few days, I have been presented a couple of opportunities for the coming year. Neither are perfect as I'm imagining perfection to be, but they are something. I'm not sure where to go from here. I have no sense of direction and here I stand with no map. I don't even have a set of "turn left at the second dead tree" kind of directions.

Anyone interested in doling out advice that I might or might not use to act on? This would require some one-on-one time, but I feel that I need actual feedback because this floundering around lost stuff just isn't working for me.

[A lot of this is always brewing in my head, but I've especially been mulling over Coach J's "The Right 'Stuff'" since the moment I read it. I love when a piece of writing sticks with me and forces me to think.]

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Wow, I meant to write a post joking about Cinco de Mayo and the fact that Cardo is baffled that that's something "we"* celebrate here, but instead that gush of crap emerged instead. Sorry.

* We, as in our family, does not celebrate this commemoration of Mexico's defeat of the French at Puebla (a battle in a war Mexico lost, by the way). I didn't really know anything about this holiday until Cardo explained it to me. I have no idea what I thought it was about when I was younger.