Who Am I?

Since I started this blog almost two months ago, I've been trying to figure out where I'm going with it. As you may have noticed, it doesn't have any central theme or running topic. In the world of blogging, this is a big no-no.

Over the past couple of months I've written about activism, my long string of jobs,  my ever-entertaining neighbors, and the trials and tribulations of single parenthood. Any one of those subjects would make a good blog theme. The problem is, none of those topics feels right to me and I've been trying to figure out why.

I've heard it said that everyone is an expert in something. Me, though, I'm more of a Jack of All Trades type. I've fallen in and out of jobs as the circumstances in my life changed, picking up a little something here, a little something else there, but always moving on before I ever got to the "expert" level at anything.

I managed my first restaurant only because the boss got locked up.

The eight years I spent teaching CCD only happened because when I went to enroll my son, Sister said "Do you teach?"  When I said "Uh, no." Her reply was "You do now."

I never really planned to become involved in activism, either, but once people knew I would help with things, they just kept on coming.

Even my entry into the graphic arts, the most career-like thing I ever did, was accidental. I was originally hired to be the office manager, but the boss had control issues and couldn't let go of anything. I gravitated to the graphics department out of sheer boredom and hassled them until they finally let me help them with stuff.

Do you see the same pattern that I'm seeing?

All these things, fortuitous though they may have been, were just a case of right place, right time (or maybe wrong place, wrong time, depending how you look at it).  Very little of what I've done in life, other than being Evan's mom, was ever a deliberate choice derived simply from me, being myself and pursuing my own interests. If I had a life plan at all, it was just 'suck it up and keep moving.' As the bargain-basement of life plans, it gets the job done, but doesn't leave much room for personal fulfillment.

Life is good right now and I'm happy. But I realize if I'm ever going to live a more deliberate and personally fulfilling life, I need to break the pattern. So I guess the blog is really turning out to be more of quest than anything else. It has become about me, figuring out who Kelly is without the job title du jour attached.

To figure out what I'm about at the bottom of it all and what I want my future to be, first I've got to look back and examine where I've been. Since I've been a lot of places, that might mean some very eclectic blog posts. I don't know if you'll hang in there with me, reader, but I certainly hope you will. The ultimate destination might just surprise us both.

Norman Rockwell's picture says it all