Someday

Before I move on to funnier territory, there is one more post in me that demands to be written first.

Yesterday morning I cracked open my raggedy laptop that needs to be replaced in the worst kind of way so that I could check my email before heading out to run errands. Many months ago, I made a background for my computer that is a collage of photos of “stuff” I’d love to have… someday.

There’s a picture of a log home, a big kitchen, a fireplace, large bathrooms and a bedroom all decked out in shades of rich, chocolaty brown. Sometimes I just stare at it and imagine myself and my family in the pictures. Cheesy I know, but it makes me feel good.

So as always, there it was to greet me yesterday. My idea of what a perfect life would be. I took a long look, probably sighed a little and then moved on.

Someday.

As things go, I somehow found myself a few hours later in a store standing directly in front of a small part of my dream. There it was – rich, warm browns with tiny gold threads woven in delicate patterns here and there. My heart leapt. I looked at the price tag. My bank account leapt.

Walking away from it, Suze Orman was whispering in my ear. “Good job, Sher! You know you can’t afford that, Girlfriend. I want you to take the money you would have spent on that wastefulness and pay down a debt. Won’t that feel good???”

But before I left the store, feeling as though my life was all about drowning in self denial, my Mother-in-law whispered, “There is no someday. There is only now.”

So I bought it. All of it. And I’m not sorry.

Yes, I know that I can’t live my life buying everything I want instead of being responsible. I know that because that’s what my life has always been about frankly. I am the kind of woman who doesn’t buy ANYTHING I don’t need.

I don’t go clothes shopping because I’m always thinking of the other things my family could do with the money. I don’t drive a great car because I feel like the money spent on car payments could be better spent keeping my family afloat. I don’t have the giant TV I want so much because there is no way to justify that extravagance when I think of all the other things in our lives that have to be taken care of.

But there is an essential truth now that I’d not given enough thought to before and that is this: Spending my life waiting on someday to come will result in my reaching the end of my life, never having gotten to someday. As far as destinations go, there is no Someday.

While I have not been somehow transformed into a woman who throws money around like I’ve got it to throw, because I don’t, I believe I have been transformed into the kind of woman who doesn’t wait to be happy.

I’m not going to wait on great experiences to happen to me – I want to make them happen. I’m not going to wait to laugh, to cry, to be silly, to dance in the kitchen, to hug someone I love, to write everything I need to write, to slow down and take it all in.

That’s yet another lesson I learned at the bedside of Mrs. H. and one I hope you’ll take to heart as well.

Much love,
Sher



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