If everybody around you is quitting their job–the job you have yourself–that could be a sign. I’m not going to have a lot of company left by the end of the year. And I’m not so sure that I shouldn’t be leaving, myself.

I was raised with a high degree of… Let’s call it the Stability Imperative. Why by happy, when you can have a steady job, a steady date, a steady routine and… stability?

Creative endeavors, and dream-chasing… well, that’s supported after the fact. After you succeed, of course, and it turns out you were right, you can become a successful writer or dancer or painter.  Or after you are dead.

My family will engrave “Dared to follow her dreams” on a tombstone.

They just aren’t going to pat a dreamer with a pulse on the back.

They’re capable of bragging about the cousin who danced with Martha Graham, or the one who wrote a Book, and in the same breath, looking at the one who’s still fighting to get there, and telling her to go sell insurance.

Wouldn’t it be easier?

Quiet secret? I never felt like I belonged quite as much as when I was dating the engineer. Housewife with a hobby. They can understand that. Even if things don’t line up quite right, and it was all just an ill-fitting part in a community play.

No, I never belonged, at all.