WHAT IS MY LIFE SUPPOSED TO BE?

As I approach another birthday, the older I get, the more I reflect on my life.  I often wonder where my life is going.  Could I have done more in my life and with my life?  Should I have tried harder in my career and in my personal life?  Would I be married by now if I had done things differently?  Should I have had kids?  I've been asking myself these questions and other questions more and more lately.

While I'm trying to be better about living in the present,  I sometimes have a hard time with it because I know that the time we have on this earth is short.  Someone recently asked me what my goals were and I had a really hard time answering them.  Frankly, I felt really stupid because I didn't have this list of all these things I wanted to achieve.  I could tell them the places that I wanted to travel to and that I wanted to get married, but I couldn't tell them specifically what I still wanted to achieve in my career, in my life, where I wanted to live, and where I saw myself in 10 years.  In that moment I felt like a failure. I felt like a failure because right then I reflected on the past 10 years in Houston and I felt like I wasted all this time and wasted away my life.

When I was younger I planned out certain things I wanted to achieve in my life.  I told myself that I would graduate at 17 from high school, by 19 I'd be done with school for radio, and then I'd be on the fast track to my career in radio. I had places I wanted to live and places I wanted  to work.  However, that didn't happen exactly as planned.  I got married, moved around the country for his job in radio, and then divorced by the time I was 28.  I had some career growth in that time I was married, but my life certainly didn't go the way I thought  it might've gone.  However, I was OK with that for the most part.  I got to meet a lot of great people, I have some really great experiences, and learned some great life lessons.

I guess when it came to having this laundry list of stuff I wanted to accomplish in my life, I didn't get too crazy with it after I got divorced.  Much of the stuff I wanted to accomplish in my life, didn't happen; and the things that did happen, I never envisioned for myself.   Maybe you've heard the saying that "God laughs when you make plans."  So part of me tried to embrace what life threw at me and go with the flow. I tried not worry so much about what was to come.  I came to Houston under the pretense of having a certain job and that went out the window when that boss left and I got a new boss.  Since then I feel like my life has been in a weird holding pattern.  Some things in my life have changed, but I sometimes feel like my life has just stood still.  Most of my friends have gone and got married, had children, made career changes, and so on...I feel like I've been in the same place for 10 years and all that's changed for me is buying a house, traveling, a really bad relationship, losing my dad, and getting older. I don't feel like I've accomplished much.

I paid a visit to a coworkers house and while we sat there catching up, she said something that really made me feel good and also made me think a lot.  She said, "Erin you're probably one of the most untapped talents in that building."  I appreciated her saying that because for the last 4-5 years I've been here I've felt like I could do more and be more, but wondered if I really had the talent.  I have had so many bosses and other people put me in a box of what they think I am, who I should be, what role they think I should be in, and what they think I'm capable of.  That lens that they chose to see me through is why I feel stuck and unaccomplished. I blame myself for waiting to be recognized and thinking that it would happen if I had more patience.

There's been moments where I sit alone in my house and look at myself in the mirror.  I just stare at my refection and ask myself, God, and the universe what is my purpose? Why am I here?  I just stare and wonder is this all my life is going to be and have I wasted too much time?   Is this the highest level of accomplishment that God has planned for me. Should I have made more plans for myself than I did?  Should I have taken more chances?  Did I make choices that have prevented me from living an amazing life? Will I still have an amazing life or is it too late?   

While I know that my life is better than many, I can't help but feel like I failed because I haven't accomplished more.  Maybe the fact that I'm not married and spent most of my time in Houston single, I feel like like I wasted those years where I didn't have anything to hold me back and instead of setting the world on fire, I sat back and let the fire inside me get extinguished by others and by myself because I let it happen.