I sometimes wonder

if this is all there is. I know that sounds really terrible and actually now that I think about it more it sounds REALLY terrible.

I almost want to just delete this and act like I never started the post, but I think I'll continue.

So, why terrible? Well, for me to ask, "Is this all there is" is awful considering that I have SO MUCH more than about 99 percent of the planet. I've got everything I could EVER need and yet I still get to the end of a week of work (that wasn't even filled with pressure, stress, or tons of deadlines), eat dinner, pick up after the kids, get them to bed and well, then what . . . ?

Tegan is working so hard, she is taking the chance to just go to bed. So, what am I going to do all alone? I could flip through endless channels of useless TV; I could read a book until I inevitably start falling asleep, I could try to fiddle around with various blog ideas and projects that I have in mind but are all sort of long-term things; I could watch a movie.

All of these things just seem to be time fillers, things to do when you don't have anything more worthwhile to do.

The truth is, I'm bored--and I feel really bad about admitting it. I am ashamed because I see every day how hard Tegan is working to get her project done and I hear every day about how difficult it is to stay focused and positive. Meanwhile, I'm in limbo between my own work projects--one wrapping up and the other not yet fully formed and ready for me to pursue. I am grateful that I am not pulling out my hair worried, but I am guilty about it as well.

I guess that is me . . . worried about being ungrateful and feeling guilty that I am not saving the world or doing Something Important.

Random thought--If Sartre argued that "Hell is Other People" (didn't he say that, in so many words, in No Exit?), then maybe I say Hell is Laundry. No matter how much of it you do, no matter how well you may do it, no matter the feeling of accomplishment and completion you achieve when it is folded and put away . . . it's coming back in five to seven days and there you are doing it all over again.

So, what is the point? Maybe I should go do someone else's laundry, so I can get the feeling of completion and accomplishment and they will have one less thing to fret about. I could start my own Laundry Brigade that travels around, taking the tedium of laundry out of someone else's hands, so that they can free themselves to achieving their own goals.

But then I'm sublimating my own goals in favor of others. Is doing other people's laundry truly the best thing I can think to do with my life?