Several Lifetimes

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.