Sick of this

I am...wasting my life.

I am learning this by reading about what other people are doing with themselves. It's not about keeping up with the Joneses. It's about...not feeling like your days are just killing time in between major events.

What do I do with myself? I work. I do normal chores. I read books and re-read books. I watch the same episodes of the same shows over and over again. I lie on the couch. I spend most of my life at home on the couch.

Okay, I do work on projects. I'm almost done with my fabric book I've been working on for over a year, and I've started crocheting on my second afghan less because I enjoy crocheting and more because I want to use up the non-pretty yarn I've had hoarded away since the dawn of time. I've been exercising at least half an hour every day for a month at this point and I'm starting to feel the difference, even if I don't look it.

But what is that? It's bupkis. It's time-killing, even if I enjoy it. Stuff to cross off my List of Things to Do This Year So I Don't Feel Like a Total Lazy Loser. Not even stuff I really want to do anymore, necessarily.

What am I doing with my life?

I feel...trapped. Trapped by my house and my limited income, which seriously, despite all my whining about being poor, is not normally a problem.

It only occurred to me last night that the relative financial freedom I anticipate once the house is paid off is only an illusion. There are always things to fix about a house. Plumbing goes dead. A mudroom must be built so we have a place to put a cast-iron stove so if our power goes out in the winter we have enough heat to not freeze. The roof starts to leak. The road needs to be re-graveled.

I will never have a chance to replenish my meager checking account. My husband has plenty in his, so he will be paying the bulk of anything major, and then I'll have to "pay him back" by paying for everything else, which will wipe out my checking account yet again and not let me even catch my breath because we always overpay to avoid paying lots of interest.

So in the meantime I can't take classes, spend money on the gas it would take to get me to volunteer somewhere, go to the frickin' therapy I think I need because I feel like I keep getting worse and worse.

And I read about what my family does, my friends do. I don't envy them their jobs that require sixty-hour work weeks, but I do envy them their kids, their positions as chair of this or that amazing volunteer organization, their three-week trips to China, their voice lessons and constant efforts to improve themselves and be the best they can be.

What am I doing? I'm lying on my couch, stitching on something only me and my husband and maybe my parents will ever see.

It's not even all about money. I could volunteer. Hell, there are plenty of places right near where I live that could maybe use some help. I could maybe even find something to do like my husband does, selling off the video games he amassed when he had a store for a tidy profit. He makes money doing these things, and he gets to spend it on stuff like Kindles and CDs and DVDs and crap. I'm not, though, am I?

I'm too scared. I'm scared of responsibility. I'm scared of having to be the one to answer to any blame if something goes wrong. I couldn't even handle a 40-hour a week professional job because it made me so anxious I couldn't eat, sleep, or go an hour without crying. I've volunteered before, but I need an exact task, or someone to tell me exactly what to do each day, or I'm too scared to take the initiative for fear I will mess something up. I'm too scared to submit any of my work to anything that might show it to more people beyond my immediate sphere because criticism makes me horribly anxious. I don't even take pictures and show it on my frickin' Facebook.

I feel...trapped. By my own fear. I want to do SO MUCH MORE. I want to look back on my life-book and feel that I did something. I made some sort of difference. I want to be more than a goddamned shut-in with no one to mourn her when she dies!