If the shoe fits

I have stepped completely off the career hamster wheel and it's nice. Life is slower and things are starting to make sense again. I've actually been making the kids' breakfast before school and not hustling everyone out the door so I won't be late. Savannah told me the other morning, "You're being like a real mom!"

Ouch.

But it's true.

I'm catching up on laundry, working on a budget, and planning meals. My body is shaping up nicely with the walks and Weight Witches. Detoxing after a year and a half of working away from home is not an overnight process. I almost have things under control enough to delve into a daily writing schedule.

Fiction.

I'm simultaneously excited and nervous. But mostly excited.

I watched "You've Got Mail" for the hundredth time the other day, but I noticed things in it I never noticed before. In one of the opening scenes, Meg Ryan's character questions whether she's made the right choice in deciding to run her mother's bookstore as her life's work. This was way before the big chain store loomed on the horizon. It was from the very beginning, when things were still going well financially. Then, when her business was threatened by Fox Books, she fought tooth and nail to hold onto it because she thought it was the right thing to do. But in the end, she lost her bookstore and found her true calling, writing children's books. If she hadn't let go of the past, she would never have found what it was she truly wanted.

I've been beating myself up because every job I've had since I went back to work, I've left badly. Punctuality is a problem for me, I'm not a morning person, and procrastination is an art form of mine. I loved covering breaking stories for the newsapers, but couldn't work with an incompetent editor. I was okay at radio and I loved most of it, but I refuse to work holidays. I enjoy exploring and experimenting with what can be done with more time to write magazine articles, but I forget deadlines. Maybe it's not because I suck, though. Maybe it's because those jobs were not for me.

Maybe I'll write a book. Maybe I'm supposed to be just a mom. I don't know.

But somewhere out there is a destiny for a chronically late night owl procrastinator who can spell really well, with a heart of gold and a taste for Flaming Hot Cheetos.