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One of the sessions I attended at BlogHer this year that was somewhat personally challenging to me was "Who We Are: Women Without Children and the Blogosphere." I'm not someone who comes in contact with or thinks about children very often in my daily life.
But, I am 37 and I am a woman and I don't have children, so the question comes up. You can't really escape it. As women, there's this weirdness in the zeitgeist about us and children (vs. men and children), and I don't know about you, but I began to feel the need to have an answer - for myself and for others.
So when I moved to L.A. at age 30 and comprehended the long, difficult career path ahead of me, I thought about it. And what I decided was this: Should my life take a turn that leads me to have a child, then that will be a blessing, but children - to me - aren't something I pursue as a want. Rather, children are something I stay open to the possibility of. I feel like my choices in life speak to my true desires.
I brought this up in the session in response to a 30-something woman who was struggling with the children question - How do you know if you want them or not, and don't you have to decide? I wasn't sure if what I said would make sense or help. Denise twittered me, "But at some point you really are faced with the do I or don't I - and isn't that what she is struggling with?" (Which I didn't get the tweet until I got home because my portable tech is sad. 2001 laptop no tweet.)
Well, I don't know if I ever *will* feel like I am faced with "do I or don't I." Or put another way, I think I decide, and have been deciding, that question everyday with my choices and prioritization even when I wasn't thinking about it specifically.
I called off a wedding when I was 26 because I wanted something different. I chose to go to and borrow tons of money for graduate film school and move to L.A. I've chosen to pursue and will continue to pursue one of the most difficult to obtain careers (television directing).
These are not the choices of someone prioritizing or pursuing children. And they are also not the choices of someone who was thinking she'd get to it later, although the jury's still out - I'm fully aware that life loves to surprise us.
The thing is, I've always felt that if what I really wanted was be married and/or have children - over and above all other considerations - Well, barring health complications that's exactly what I would have done. I could have gotten married. I could have had kids then. Instead I called off my wedding and went to graduate school. And that's a major life choice that I own every day, baby.
Or, at least I will when I pay off my student loan at age 52.
What I'm trying to say is, whenever I do feel like I don't know what I want in life, I look back at my choices to see how they've led me to where I am and what they might be telling me. There's two sides to this.
You might look over your choices and realize you're going the wrong way - like when I called off my wedding. Or you might look over your choices and realize that it is the pursuit of what you truly desire that finds you where you are today.
Well, OK then. As I said in the panel, I work really hard to make the best choices for me every day, and then I have faith that where those choices lead me is a good place for me. Certainly I feel better and more sure of myself today than I did ten years ago. I've come a long way, and I'm still going. Somewhere.
And when I don't know what I want next year, or in a few years, or for the rest of my life, I think, well, what do I want right now? This week, this month, this quarter. What's ahead of me to do and what's the best choice from that? I take those choices and move forward from there.
Here's a smaller example: My upcoming weekend. I have a lot of work to do this weekend, but after the breakup I decided I needed to
