Definition of Success

As you probably guessed, yes, packing and unpacking is all we've been doing for the past week. Tomorrow we get the moving truck, move out of the apartment and spend our first official night in the house. Hopefully there will not be too many spiders and crickets serenading our slumber that night. We've sprayed the house inside for bugs, and our encounters with the six and eight legged kind are becoming less...inside at least. Outside, its a whole other story. Mostly there are as many crickets as there are ants. Crickets I can live with. Ants, I cannot. Fire ants - get near them and they will mercilessly sink their seemingly life size dagger teeth into you and hang on for life! There is not relief until I smash them by smacking the crap out of my feet. Oy!

Its been 3 1/2 months now since I've stopped working for Merchants (golf clap in the background...and an unenthusiastic "yay.") and I feel like I'm so far removed from the working world. In a good way though. Though I enjoyed my season as an underwriter, I was ready to move on. There are so many things I've enjoyed being able to do as a "mooching off my husband mama", like trying new recipes, surfing facebook endlessly for news on friends' events in life, taking lots of walks and exploring new cities. My days are filled with plenty of things, but just not the things I was used to when working.

My definition of success has officially be challenged because of this change. How is success defined? By how much money you make? By how important your position at work is? By how many people you have under you? Its been a struggle for me to adapt to not making income. Why? Maybe because I feel like I'm floundering and am wasting learned skills used at work. Honestly I think that my logic tells me because I am not making money that I am not successful. As a sidenote, no, you dont have to make lots of money to be a success. (arent you relieved??!!)

That has caused me to think more about what I want to do with my time, instead of filling it with some of the meaningless things I do. I'd like to start an organic garden (ahhh...I'm totally new at this) and maybe some day grow enough to avoid having to buy so much produce at the store. I'd also like to be a mom of course, no explanation needed. I'm working on volunteering somewhere (meals on wheels or at a food bank maybe?) to invest time in something more important than me, and I want to learn to be more SELF less. I'm tired of being motivated by what I want or what I need. What about others? I am so spoiled to have a good husband , a roof over my head, etc. Its time to turn my time and effort toward something greater than ME.