Groundhog Day ... Again!

It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.  Credit Phil Connors of Groundhog Day, one of my favorite movies.  I love change.  If I spend too much time doing the same thing, I fall into bad habits.  Unfortunately, it's happening again.  It's bitterly, bleakly cold and icy and miserable, a winter that seems to crop up every couple of years.  Some years we escape the worst, some years, we pay for it.  This year we're paying for it.  I hate the cold.  I hate wearing shoes.  I hate not seeing the sun.  I hate working in a soulless job.  Not shocking news, if you've read this blog before, which again, let's face it, no one is.  But maybe my writings will be immortalized when I'm gone, like Anais Nin, then again, who the hell cares, if I'm fertilizing soil on the beach with my ashes, why do I give a rat's ass what my writing does?  Okay, that was cynical (here's a tip for you, on Word's spellchecker, unless you add my name, Cyndi, to your dictionary, it will suggest "cynical" as a replacement for my name - coincidence???).  


I long for change, for a chance to soar and live my big dreams.  But I know it's not the time.  I have to finish this PhD, which right now is this millstone hanging about my neck (I should stop using that phrase, it was a bible verse I had to remember when I was 13, and I hate bible verses as much as I hate organized religion and bitter cold).  I am stuck, for the next three years.  Of course "stuck" is actually a place where millions of Americans would love to be.  I shouldn't complain about a job that pays as much as mine does without working ungawdly hours.  I shouldn't complain about having a husband who is loyal and loving and hilariously funny and indulgent of my passions - well, that, I don't complain about!  But the best part of my day is coming home, cracking open a bottle of red, cranking up Food Network, the Cooking Channel, Top Chef, or Seinfeld, and making a kick-ass dinner.  That's the good stuff.  My husband's humor, our comfortable house, the feeling of red wine coursing through my veins, that is the good stuff.  Yet, every morning I wake up, eh 2, 3 a.m., restless, mind racing, wanting more, needing more, plotting for more.  I can't explain why every vision includes the beach, water, sunshine.  I've always lived in land-locked states - and hated it.  When I'm on the water, I'm home, I'm happy, the world is my oyster.  This happens approximately 4 or 5 days of an average year.  


But alas, another PhD semester looms with another 3 classes, 9 classes of graduate work, a job that is relentlessly busy now - I'm in charge of hiring 87 people in the next month, people who don't want to come live here.  I have to convince them that this is paradise, even though I know otherwise!  So, once again, my vision remains true - finish the PhD, find a kick ass job on the beach, and continuing living my happily-ever-after.


PS:  This is the ONLY picture I have of us in the winter in Wyoming - and it's inside.  The horrible Snuggies that our friends thought was a funny party.  I was drunk ...