Shambhala Moon, or Unable to Sleep

I sit in the dark, with my cat darting between me and the computer screen, listening to Mama snore. I can't sleep. Third night in a row. First night that it's started this early and so I've gotten out of bed instead of tossing and turning. The other two nights it was about my head cold; tonight, it's just my head.

Today, I read several articles in the new issue of Shambhala Sun. I can't remember which articles and it's too dark to fetch the copy to check. I remember Pico Iyer writing on a famous haiku that said, and I paraphrase, "the world of dew/is a world of dew/and yet, and yet." Norman Fischer wrote on mindfulness now and how life is empty if all we do is live to please ourselves.

I came across an article this evening (in a different periodical) about a grad school colleague of mine who has gone on to do some interesting and important things in museums. And I was impressed. And inspired. And jealous. The last of which then embarrassed and upset and angered me, especially because I had (vainly) though I'd made some internal progress about not judging SAHM-ness as "less" and working as "more." We were at the same place a decade or so ago, similiar fields of study, similiar career interests. Now, totally different places. My feelings weren't so much about the colleague as about my choices. What do I want to be doing? The MacArthur "Genius" Grants were announced this week. My first response? Hmmm, recipients between the ages of 32 and 60 something. I'm not too old to do something! But what is that? For me, academia and career were often about my own pleasure--professional and intellectual masturbation, if you will (though to be fair, much of what I did in museum education brought pleasure, and other benefits, to many; but that realization doesn't fit well with my current mood). But in becoming a mother, I intentionally left all that behind--or did I? Obviously not quite. I thought academia and career weren't enough for me; maybe motherhood isn't enough for me. What is "enough"? I had thought motherhood had changed everything about me--my identity, my values, my goals, my desires. Maybe "changed" isn't the right word. Maybe motherhood has just added new layers, these new, richer, more complicated layers. Or revealed them. And so I am the same that I ever was but new too? And motherhood has allowed me to embrace aspects of myself that were left unfulfilled by career, but with career languishing I still feel incomplete somehow? It's dumb, and I'd sound like the bad answer to a college application or job interview, but if you asked me what I want to do right now, I'd say "help people" or "give something back." I feel so blessed and lucky, am so grateful. Does it matter that right now I do that on a very small scale? Even if I dream of a grand one? A genius-inspired one? Even if I don't really know what that is? Or if I don't realize I'm already doing it? And doesn't this still return to what gives me pleasure?

Yes, a minor midnight midlife crisis. Which reminds me of a cartoon that used to make me laugh which showed a professor in an academic midlife crisis despairing, "I've never been quoted in the New York Times!" I lived that moment tonight. And I'm not laughing.

And I'm not sleeping, either.