Living in Limbo

The title for today's entry came to me while I was walking into work this morning ... not that I have a shortage of other titles (many of which also came to me while walking wo work), but today's seemed most pertinent at the moment, and in a strange way it ties back to a life that is "sustainable". Both have a feeling of waiting for something to happen, of nothing changing, of the same old routines and outcomes being repeated over and over, of being stuck in a rut.

Why do I feel like I am living in Limbo at the moment, and is this feeling isolated to just one area or is it across a multitude of areas in my life?

Unfortunately it is across a number of areas. At home, my marriage feels like it is somewhat in limbo, at work I feel like my career is in limbo, other escapes I may have in life (dancing, diving, tennis) are the same, and that list of things that I need (want) to tidy up at home (getting my life in order) is no better.

Let's start with my marriage. I think that since day dot, both Nina and I have been hedging our bets that things may not work out, and while we are both committed to making it work, sometimes I fear that one day one of us will toss in the towel (she often tries to convince me to jump) or decide that we will be happier not married to each other. She commented last night that she still sees everything as mine - it is my house (not hers), my bed (not hers), etc. Naturally, I told her that they are ours, and added for good measure that I am her husband, but to a degree I feel a bit the same - I can still identify which books on our bookshelves and CDs on the CD racks are "mine" and which are "hers". We each have our own computers and cars which the other barely touches or uses, and our finances are not at all intertwined (she has a couple of my credit cards with her name on them). We have thought about getting a pet, but at the back of my mind is a worry about what happens if we don't stay together. This feeling is compounded many times over when the subject of having a child comes up (the subject of its own future blog entry). Recently, I have been thinking of getting a new car (packaging it through work) - but for this to make any sense, we would probably need to get rid of both of our cars (and even then it would cost more than we are spending today) - one of my worries with this is that if Nina and I split up, then she will be left without any form of transportation. Indeed, it may sound silly, but one of my fears if our marriage fails is that of what will happen to Nina.

My career … where do I start? At the moment I am not feeling at all engaged in my job. That can be read a couple of ways, and in writing it, I intend it to mean both of them. At the moment, I am not mentally engaged or stimulated in what I am doing, and I do not feel that I am being used in an effective manner or providing optimal value to my employer. This means that the days drag on, I am not getting a sense of achieving anything and do not feel a lot of professional self-worth or value. It also means that I feel no purpose in my job and have little optimism regarding my longer term career prospects. In effect, I feel like I am marking time in what I am doing. The irony is that my employer seems to be happy with what I am doing – which only makes me feel like more of a cheat. With this lack of optimism about future career prospects in my current role, and uncertainty about how long my current role will last, thoughts of that new car (mentioned earlier) become even more cautious.

In the past, I have had a number of other escapes in my life. These have included scuba diving, tennis, and dancing. For at least the last year or two, I have not been involved in any of these activities. In some ways I miss them, but in other ways I feel trapped in a rut and can’t motivate myself sufficiently to take any of these up again. I often also feel like I am doing things for the sake of doing it, but am more watching myself rather than being emerged in the activity. It is almost like I am living my life outside my body and judging my performance and actions. This is a hard way to live. It is especially hard as I often can’t honestly say that I know how I really feel about the activities that I do – and therefore am left questioning why I might want to do a particular activity.

I learnt to scuba dive about 9 years ago, and did it for about a year, but stopped because I got terribly seasick. Also, the water here is generally quite cold and I often felt out of place when diving and socialising with the diving crowd. Since I got married, I haven’t been bothered to take it up again – partly because of the time aspect, partly because you need a buddy (Nina is not allowed to dive), and partly because of the effort involved. Yes, I say I’d love to be really comfortable and proficient at it, but have never done it enough.

Tennis has been an on-again, off-again sort of activity – at the moment it is off again. The biggest reasons as to why I don’t play at the moment are a mixture of inconvenience at having to get out of the house in time for the games, never being good enough at it, coordinating meals with Nina if/when I do play, and now, because it clashes with the personal trainer that Nina & I see.

Dancing is something that I did for a dozen years before I married Nina, and something that I encouraged her to start. I have stopped (relatively) recently for a number of reasons. I have achieved most of the medals (grading levels) that the studio offered, my teacher was getting short with me and seemed to be trying me to dance styles that I didn’t like so much, and it was getting to be too much of a drain on my finances (especially with a mortgage). Now that Nina is working again, and now that I’ve had a break, it might be fun to start it back up again, but I am not sure I know how to get back into it.

The final thing that I mentioned at the start – the final reason why I feel like I am in limbo – is the endless list of tasks that I have that need doing at home. I have a mental list of tasks that never seems to see any items being ticked off, and the complexity or time required for the items on the list seems only ever to grow. Of course, writing a blog only makes this list longer and diverts me from the other tasks.