What do I want when I grow up?

I'm 53 and 3/4's and I'm actually thinking about what it is that I want when I grow up. I don't remember ever thinking about that in those early years. When I was in high school and then my 20's I remember friends saying, " I want to be a teacher, or a lawyer, or a mother, or actor/actress. I don't remember saying anything like that except once when I said I wanted to be a nurse....then I took my first biology class at St. Benedict's college and that was the last time I said or did anything in that direction. I did graduate college 20 years later from another all girl college, St. Catherine's, but my major was communications. As far from math or science as I could get.

I quit college the first time, got a job, got married and had children, but that was what I wanted at that time....not something I set out to do as a goal. A little less impulse might have limited my life's' marriages to 1 instead of 2. I wanted more than the 2 great children I have, but I was not able to make that happen. Even 20 years ago my body was moving in directions I had no control over. I know for certain that I never said I wanted to grow up and work in the insurance industry for 35 years and yet that is where I am today. The pay and benefits have always been good and my responsibility in the family.

So what does a woman of my vintage want to be and to do when she grows up? I'm giving it some serious thought lately. Women don't buy sports car in mid-life, they think. I think a sports car would be easier and a quicker fix. But this woman is a fixer so she is thinking. So far I have decided I want to be relaxed and released. I want to be able to walk in the house and not see everything that needs to be done...or done over. I want to continue walking past all that with my shoulders relaxed and face smiling.... before the glass of wine to unwind.

I think I can accomplish relaxed and released. Next up, Passion. This is harder to find. So many of us women work so hard at the girlfriend, wife, mother, employee things that we don't stand in one spot long enough or quietly peaceful enough to hear our passion and it gets buried so deep you forget what it might have been and the deepest you can see yourself from is the gray hair or the jeans that don't zip.

So that is where I'm starting from, my outside in. I'm going to get comfortable with the woman in the mirror. Decide and acknowledge that she is worthwhile and someone I could really like and have fun with. There are so many layers to dig through, but I remember that when I was younger, for me, the best most fun was almost always in getting there, wherever there was. So even if I don't find my passion before quitting time, I will put my energy and joy into the journey. Maybe the journey is my passion. Maybe what I am meant to do is to relax, release and play. That sounds okay to me....
It's about damn time.