Disconnected

Anyone notice I've been a bit absent from the blogosphere as of late? Have I not been inspired to write? Did I decide to take a little break? Am I just plain crazy busy? Maybe a combination of all of those things...I don't really know.

I don't like it when bloggers who don't write on their blogs for a while, post about how they feel bad about not writing. It's your blog, and I think you should write whenever you want to. I always go back to read bloggers that I enjoy, no matter how frequently or infrequently they write. So, why am I writing a post about not writing posts? Because I realized tonight, as I was reading some of my favorite blogs for the first time in a while, that I feel disconnected. Not just within the blogging community, but in life in general.

For the past several months, I've been waiting to find out what will happen to my job, after my firm is officially taken over by another company on December 1st. The firm that I've worked at for the past 16 years - more years than I've been married. There were plenty of distractions over the summer... trips to the Zoo, to the beach, vacations at the lake, family get-togethers, fun events like BlogHer and birthday celebrations in Vegas. And all the while at work, there's been an undercurrent of waiting. Lots of projects to work on, but all with the uncertain future of the new firm, and ambiguity of how everything will change by the end of the year.

Every decision at work and at home has hinged on the big question that is waiting to be answered...will I have a job?

It's been like a freaking tortuous roller coaster that you have no choice but to just hang on and pray for the duration of the ride. At one point, I started to get really annoyed at well-meaning friends who would ask if I knew anything yet about my job, and when would I know, and do I have any sense of which way it might go, and am I going to start looking around in the meantime, and have I updated my resume, and.....until finally, I just didn't want to talk about it anymore to anyone but a very few people. I started telling my Mom that my job is just GREAT every time she asks, so she'll stop obsessively worrying about it.

I think somewhere along the way, I disconnected myself. From some of my friends. From my attachment to my career. From blogging. From my own family to some extent.

A couple weeks ago, my husband told me that he thinks we're depressed. We're depressed. I guess that's his nice way of saying that he thinks I'm depressed, without making me feel all alone about it. I told him he was crazy, and I was not depressed. Since then, I've proceeded to cry just about every other day. Hmm, maybe he has a point. I think it's all just overwhelming. Especially in the past month, I haven't been able to enjoy the things that normally give me great pleasure. Like Fall and Halloween - my absolute favorite time of the year. And like writing - the thing that gives my mind clarity and helps me feel connected to myself and to others.

I've actually been holding it together at work quite impressively, I think. I've been very zen about the whole thing. Whatever happens, happens. I can't control it, so why get upset about it. Everything happens for a reason. It will all work out. Change equals opportunity. And the thing is, I believe all of that. I really do. So, why am I so disconnected?

Crazy. It's the new Normal.

Every time a friend asks me how I'm doing lately, I find that my answer is "Crazy". There's just no other way to describe my life lately, and I seem to be settling into crazy as the norm these days.

A few years before I had kids, I went skydiving for the first time. It's something I had always wanted to do, but I made a point to do it before I had kids. You know. In case I died. So I didn't leave my kids without a Mom because I wanted to experience the thrill of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

Which brings me to the not so perfectly good airplane. I wanted to go skydiving on the coast. If I was going to die, I wanted to go down while enjoying a beautiful view of the ocean. After signing my life away and prepping for my tandem skydive, I waited in the hanger with my husband and his best friend Scott, who is a pilot. When the plane arrived, Scott comforted me by telling me that I was probably safer jumping out of that particular plane, than I would be staying in it for the landing. So I had that going for me. Which was nice.

While I was skydiving along the gorgeous Pacific Ocean, which by the way was the most exhilarating thing I have ever done in my life and I'd do it again in a heartbeat, my husband and Scott were waiting for the van to take them over to meet me at the landing spot. Apparently, it was a fire drill for them when the time came to scramble into the old van and race down the dirt road to get to the spot before I landed. Along the way, the guys heard a huge BOOM that they literally thought was me landing on the roof of the van. They sat in silence for a moment. Then the driver simply said, "Normal", and the ride went on with no questions asked.

So, whenever I think things can't get any crazier in my life, and then they do, I think of this little story. Because the crazy is just plain normal. And the ride keeps on going. No questions asked.