A friend of mine asked me about my favorite movie the other day. Anyone who's a movie-snob would cringe at some of my favorites and probably think I am an uncultured, cheesy-movie-liking idiot. But I don't care much for movie-snobs (or any other snobs for that matter) so I don't really care what they think. Anyhow, my favorite movie of all time is still the same as it was when I applied to college 14 years ago.

My favorite movie of all time is still Dead Poets Society. While I was very lucky to not have parents like the ones in the movie and wouldn't nearly qualify my life as oppressed and predetermined as those students, the message of sucking the marrow of life resonated strongly with me then and still does today. There are so many things I like to do and so many things I yearn to learn. So many things I wish I could do like design and play an instrument and draw well and write well and be more creative and artistic. I feel like the amount of things I want to do/learn/be would easily cover several lifetimes.

I don't know how to figure out which path to take. There are many aspects of my life that I love and wouldn't give up. I love being married. I love that I've shared so much of my life with Jake and that we have all these memories that we can unleash like a treasure chest. I love reminiscing with him. I love being a mom. I love the joy and wonder David has brought into my life. The little moments where he does something completely unexpected, the minutes after he wakes up from a nap all flushed, the hours we spend bonding while I nurse him. I wouldn't give those up for anything. I love reading. I dedicate several hours of my week to reading books and those hours are some of my most cherished. My little escape into the minds and worlds of others. My opportunity to experience life in a different way. That's something else I am not willing to give up. Those are my core three that need to be in my life. There are many other time- consuming activities I like that I'd rather not stop doing like: photography, writing this site, scrapbooking my son's memories, taking classes with/for David, etc.

But then there are others. Hours wasted having petty arguments around office politics. Hours wasted trying to configure some kind of installation or a piece of code that's missing a stupid parenthesis or semicolon (yey for python). Hours killed with being in a bad mood or stuck in traffic or running stupid errands or having a fight. I know it's impossible to dispose of all of these. And maybe I am just itching because it's time to try something new. I think that my main problem is that I feel insatiable. I feel like picking one thing is not going to satisfy me since I still have to give up picking something else.

I had told myself that if Jake did well enough for us to live on his salary, I'd go back to school. Maybe get a PhD in Child Psychology. Maybe get one in Computer Science. Or maybe I'd do a collection of Masters degrees. One for math, one for computer science, one of english, one for statistics. One for design. One for psychology. Art history. Linguistics. Photography. Several individual languages. I really can go on for quite some time. Now, I'm thinking maybe I should just take classes. I don't know if that's even possible. I don't know that the schools I'd want to attend offer the option of just taking classes. But I suppose theoretically if I had enough money, I could convince them to let me. I wonder if that would quench my thirst. Make me feel like I was finally sucking the marrow of life.

Make me feel like I was actually living several lifetimes in one.