I have always taken pride in the fact that I knew who I was and what I wanted from life.  I read lots of self-help books, worked hard to receive promotions, and knew what kind of parent I wanted to be.  I stopped at nothing to have the American Dream of the house with a white picket fence, two kids, new cars, and was a soccer and dance mom.  I thought I had it all and I thought I knew it all and thought I was invincible and doing this whole life thing better than anyone I knew.  Boy was I in for a surprise.

Instead, it all came crumbling down around me and here is what I learned:

Sometimes what you think you want, or what you think you should want, isn't what you really want after all.  Confused now?  I was too when I made this realization.  I thought I was supposed to want all that stuff.  I thought I was supposed to want the job with the big title and there was something wrong with me if I didn't.  So what I got was a job in accounting that I hated that I let consume my life.  What I was really doing was reaching for the goals my husband wanted me to reach for and that I thought I was supposed to reach for to be a good wife and a success in the work world. 

I put some very important parts of my heart on hold when I got married. I was so anxious to please my new husband and be what everyone else wanted me to be that I forgot what made me happy.  I forgot that I'd always wanted to be a writer and an artist.  I forgot how important getting a college degree was to me. 

So now I'm doing what I should have been doing at age 19 when I got married.  I'm trying to find myself.  I thought I was way ahead of the game back then.  Getting married, getting a good credit rating, buying a house, working at the same job for ten years much earlier than all my friends.  But what I really did was skip a very important part of my development.  I skipped the years I was supposed to be lost, exploring different jobs, people, lifestyles, and making big mistakes. 

Life sure would be a lot easier now if I'd done all this back then, when it was just me without two children to care for.  We all live and learn, don't we?  But some of us learn things a little out of order.