Sunday Ruminations

I'm feeling reflective and that's not always so good, you know?

I've often felt in-between. It's like how I'm too tall for the average-length pants and too short for the talls. When I went to college, I didn't have enough money to pay for it but wasn't poor enough to get great financial aid. I'm too bookish for a lot of people but not smart or educated enough for the really brilliant. I'm a homebody who loves to cook but would give her right arm to travel the world. I'm too heavy for those who fancy slim women but too small for those who really like big women. I'm very shy but can talk your ear off.

If astrology meant anything I'd say it's because I'm a Gemini on the cusp of Cancer. Talk about two diametrically opposed signs.

I suppose in some ways all this might make me somewhat interesting to some folks, but it's not really a comfortable position to be in. As I get older I'm finding that I care about it less, but that doesn't mean I don't care about it at all.

I think, too, that my life is duller than I'd like it to be, not because I'm dull necessarily, but because of funds in some cases and lack of companions in others. I want to go camping again but there really isn't anyone to go with -- well, one friend, but he won't sleep outside. :) At least it would be a compromise to go at all, though. I want to spend six weeks in Europe but have neither the money nor the vacation time. And though I live in an interesting area, I don't want to be doing everything on my own.

If I had not been born and raised here, I wonder what things I'd take advantage of that I don't even think about because I've always lived here.

Talking with a male friend the other day, I realized again how guys I know (more often than women, though I do know women like this as well) are much more successful at being self-contained, complete in themselves. Or passably complete, anyway; we're all interdependent, social creatures to some extent. [Warning: sweeping overgeneralization coming.] They're happier, though, going about their lives on their own, pursuing their interests, and finding life meaningful even without someone to share it with.

The last couple of years I've really been trying to "be me for me," not be the me someone else might like. It's hard, though, when you're conditioned otherwise and have been at it for forty years or so.