After almost 20 years of being a nurse, and over that working my ass off, I am FI, Financially Independent. That means that I can lay around and do nothing and still pay my bills. My husband can have no job and we can still pay our bills. All of it over the years suddenly came to the finish line, crashing down in front of me without even me knowing it. Boom! There it was, as I had pedaled as fast as I could to keep up with life. And now.... My motivation is gone. Poof! Just a last little puff of smoke that has disappeared into the wind. I have no motivation to do anything. I feel like I gave it my all and now my body has just given up and needs time to just recover. It almost reminds me of when I got pneumonia last year. I was coughing and still going and doing and holidays and Christmas, and then I was down for a week once I got home and got meds.
So now what?
All these things other people seem so keen on have never appealed to me. I don't like to shop. I would like to travel more, but dragging my little kids with us slows everything down and they are in school. I could take them out and we could travel, slow travel around the world, but all of us like routine and our space. We need our place. I just don't know. It seems so weird and strange. Nothing changed, but everything has changed. I don't look at things the same way anymore. I have all these options and yet, no motivation to do any of them. Mostly work, in general, does not appeal to me.
I almost feel like I need to call my therapist to talk it out, but how do you explain that you used all your energy to get somewhere and now you are just burned out? Maybe that is what it is, burn out? Maybe that is what it is. Burn out. I have done everything and reached the finish line, and now I have used all my energy and just want to sit down and recover from the race. The race that has taken almost my entire adult-ish life. I went from just desperation and trying to stay out of dependence on my mom and escape that life, to working/striving/struggling/building.
I just kept going and it did pay off. Even better, it is a life I am happy with. I checked all the boxes I had laid out for myself. College, career, husband, kids, house. I think that is the problem now. I had this check list for my life. I checked every box, even ones I had never thought would happen, and now I have no goals or checkboxes left. Never thought not having a goal or a checkbox was possible. That's how I got from one place to another. I had a goal, a vision, a thing to work for, to pursue, to capture or achieve. I did all of them. I did them better than I expected or could have imagined.
I am just not used to this feeling, a complete lack of drive. I have a constant force that propels me toward the future, toward my identified wants. And for the first time in my life, I don't really have anything I really want. Yes, I want to do some activities and see some things, but I don't have a vision of what my life needs or what I need to focus on that will help me make decisions. Maybe its not a lack of drive, maybe its a lack of goals, because I can't have drive unless I have a goal I am pursuing. I'm not pursuing anything right now. And goals for me are not "do the dishes" or "clean out the garage and office". They are multi-year, life altering and defining ideas, and they are missing in my mind.
I have heard a lot of people talk about how people don't talk about being FI after they reach it. It seems to be this big hairy Audacious goal, and then once they reach it, they just fade away or disappear. I guess they got to their finish line and went off in to the sunset. I might be the exception to that rule. I am instead feeling a need to reach out and figure it out. Like how to I define my life now. I was a career person, who achieved more in her career that she ever pictured possible. This is new and a bit unsettling.
No comments:
Post a Comment