Investment

I've been thinking tonight about investment and how little invested I am in many parts of my life. I keep my invovlement in many things low-risk. And although that makes life safe and comfortable, it has also made it rather boring.

Have you ever resented teachers for giving you a grade you didn't deserve? I'm not talking about a bad grade. I've turned in so many papers that recieved A's they weren't worthy of. In my surprise I have wondered, "Do they really think that's the best I could do?" And even though I know I am capable of doing better work, what motivation is there to do so? Why work harder when a half-hearted attemped will get the grade?

I am capable of more, and I know it. Not just academically. Honestly, in the end, what will a degree matter? But my effort...what will I be able to say of my effort?

Outside of school, I also find myself giving half-hearted attempts in many areas of my life. I'd like to say that I've struggled to lose the last bit of baby weight, but that's not the truth. It's no struggle. I just choose to eat foods that don't benefit my body. I choose to be lazy about working out regularly. It's hardly a struggle if I'm not trying. If I were committed to my health, the weight wouldn't even be a concern. If I were committed to setting a good example of healthy living for my son, I wouldn't keep looking at those pre-pregnancy jeans and feeling disappointed.

Most disturbing for myself is how little I've invested in my own faith over the last decade. (Holy crap, you're getting old when you can categorize your life in decades, aren't you?) The thing that disappoints me the most is that when I question the tradition of faith I've been raised in, I don't search out the answers. I tuck everything away in dusty, old cupboards and don't bother looking in their for years. I desperately want to know my own faith...not because it's what I've been taught, but because I've searched out answers myself and it's what I beleive.

Not to get all Mariah Carey on you, but sometimes I wish I was a butterfly. There are so many changes I want to see in my life, that's it's overwhelming to think of where to begin. I want to wrap myself up in a cocoon and come out new. I want to wake up with a revived sense of pupose and ambition.

This is the problem with growing up and marrying into the military: when I think of starting new, I think of moving. I think that a PCS (permanent change of station) will be the answer. No, it won't fix things, but it'll give me a clean slate to become the new and improved Kelly with all the answers and smaller jeans.

But after almost 29 years of military living, I know a change of location does not equal a change of heart.

What is it that truly motivates people to make the changes they desire in themselves? It can't just be frustration with the current circumstances, because I have that, but I lack motivation. It can't just be a desire to become who you want to be, because I have that, too. What is motivation? What causes it to take you from wanting change to making change?

Perhaps it's just one good choice. And then another. Perhaps it's just breaking it down from the whole into parts and realized that I can't change myself. But I can make one good choice. And if I make one good choice, maybe I could do that again tomorrow.

I don't know. I just know that as happy as I am with my life in general, I'm dissatisfied with my own level of investment in these areas and others. I want to be a girl who is unafraid to take risks. I want to be someone who produces ideas, even if some (or most) of them are crap. I want to be someone who puts her heart into the projects she's involved in, not just her head.

I want to stop writing blogs like this and start writing blogs about the life I'm living, not dreaming about.