Let's Talk About...Responsibility

Let's get one thing straight: I hate responsibility. I abhor it.

This might come as a surprise to some who have known me for awhile because I used to be a ᴠᴇʀʏ ʀᴇsᴘᴏɴsɪʙʟᴇ ᴘᴇʀsᴏɴ who did ᴠᴇʀʏ ʀᴇsᴘᴏɴsɪʙʟᴇ things.
For example, there was that raising a kid thing, which I managed to do without too much damage, I think.
Then there was that corporate job thing in which I was an editor for publications that were worth gazillions of dollars.  I pulled that one off pretty good for a pretty decent length of time but the truth is that I only pulled it off because I saw it as one big stupid game.  Or maybe like I was an actor playing the role of Big Time Editor In Charge Of Important Publications.  That wasn't actually on my business cards but it should have been.

Guess which one was me

Another reason I was successful in my acting career as VIP Editor was because I know big words and lots and lots of ridiculous words, I memorized all the important business-like catch phrases, and I can ad lib my arse off.  Seriously, I'm like the Ad Lib Queen. I could participate very successfully in meetings by saying things like "the flotsam of the jetsam is that the perpendicular velocity of the publication with the mass media marketplace - et al - means that our bottom line can be subjugated to the equanimity of our fait accompli which means, of course, that we are thinking outside the box."

End result?  I kept getting promoted.

Me, in my big time editor officer.  Wearing a tiara, of course.

Getting promoted was fun because I kept getting nicer offices and even nicer paychecks.  It was also kind of fun to watch my peers try to figure out how I was getting higher and higher on the oh-so-important (to them) corporate ladder with only a high school degree in an industry in which 99.999 percent held impressive degrees from impressive colleges and universities. Of course I even had my own staff and a few of them held master's degrees which made a few people's heads nearly explode.
So much fun.

But I was bored and I also did not like the constant pressure of having to make sure that millions of dollars worth of books got published on time.  It was all way too adult for me.  Obviously I was good at it but no actor plays the same role forever, right?  So I did what any "normal", level-headed responsible  person would do:  I went to bartending school.  But that's a story for another time.

Let's stay on track here.

I am not doing very well with this being an adult thing and I've been in the adult age bracket for a long time now.  I noticed decades ago that I have very little in common with other people my age who are all about being an adult.  Recently we bought a house after years of renting.  It's a great house...no, it's freakin' amazing. And it has caused my already very active anxiety level to go through the roof.  Because we own a house now.  There is a mortgage, there is a furnace that needs to be replaced, there is an invisible tether that only I can see which means that I cannot simply decide to move to Connecticut or Maine or Canada because I like the landscape there or they have good take out.

And my poor husband.  Man, he deals with a lot being married to someone like me.  You know that opposites attract thing?  Truth.  We adore each other but we are polar opposites in a ton of ways.  He is blissful in home ownership, sleeping like a baby as he drifts off thinking lovingly of his low interest mortgage rate.  Meanwhile this is me, languishing in it as I worry myself into exhaustion that will lead to 3-4 hours of insomnia-riddled sleep:

And then there is the guilt.  Oh, the guilt!  I mean, how dare I be anything less than ecstatic about owning an amazing home?  How dare I quake in my boots while my husband busts his butt to make this all happen?
Which, of course, leads to the inevitable daily beat myself up sessions:
I am bad.
I am ungrateful.
Why can't I be like other middle aged home owning ladies?
I should cut my hair off so I look more like them.
Why do I still insist that all my shoes are platforms? Grown up ladies don't wear platforms, they were sensible adult shoes.
What exactly did my husband mean when he said I am definitely related to the guys from the Sonic commercials?
I need to apologize to him for being an anxiety-ridden stress mess (who cracks up a little too hard at the Sonic commercials).
No, I need to grovel.
I should probably not share all the thoughts that are in my head with him.
Why was this month's electricity bill so high?
We should turn off the lights and do everything by candlelight. That might be fun.
And on and on and on...

Which leads me right back in a full circle way to:

Overall, all I really want to do is make pretty pictures and read.

 -Sharon