I’m getting tired of keeping up. I wonder when I’ll get to the point where I can stop working so hard. Networking, marketing, alliances. It’s all thinking, and while it can be very exciting, in the long spread of things, none of it matters all that much. Not to any of us. No matter how sweet the offer, how exciting the journey, or the opportunity, even when seen as a chance and an adventure, sometimes "someday" never comes, and life down the line doesn’t necessarily get easier.

I don’t want to live a life of "someday," where I believe a time in the future will finally be so much easier.That’s the bullshit we’re pedaled by financial institutions urging us to feed them our money, in their safe keeping, for that proverbial rainy day. I want to live without a computer for a week, or even a month. When my life doesn’t have to have deadlines or obligations. Where I can, if I so choose, spend the entire week seeing back to back movies, where I can discover new music, and just read books. I don’t want to look at a web browser, email client, or word processor. Sometimes we just need to recharge, to travel and immerse ourselves in "other." I want to spend my time writing for pleasure, photographing, stirring up recipes and crafts, getting glue on my hands. Making up silly bedtime stories and journaling all the sweet quiet moments. When she discovers an inch worm. When he pushes her back. Instead, I tackle to-do lists and feel like I’m suffocating.

I think too much about proving myself instead of doing only what brings me joy. The problem is you never want to look back and think you let an opportunity pass you by, so you take on too much, or do things half-assed. And then you’re irritated that you did them at all. And you regret your regrets and wonder if anyone really knows how to do it.

It’s harder when you have kids, too, because then it’s not only a choice you’re making between doing work, or not doing work. It becomes another choice you’re making. When you choose to work, it also means you’re choosing NOT to spend time with your children. That’s the choice you’re making. And then I walk around feeling the self-imposed guilt, no matter what I choose.

My children will only be this age once. I’m living it, and I’m very aware with each passing day, that these are the years I’ll look back on, the ones I’d trade anything in the world to have back. And it makes me cry, hysterically, even now in the writing of it. But what choice do I really have? To not give a shit how my book does? As it is, I’m horrible with returning emails, and I don’t remember the last time I picked up a phone to call anyone. My time is spent working, even my time with the kids, even when I’m reading to them, one story after the next, I’m thinking of my next book. I want to find the guy who came up with the "work hard, play hard" mantra and pass his testicles over a French mandolin.