A Complaint First, then a Comment: Waiting Places and Tribes

If you've ever read "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" by Dr. Seuss, you'll know what I'm referring to; I feel like somehow my life has become a big pause in the waiting room of the proverbial Waiting Place.

Waiting for something to begin. Waiting for activities to start. Waiting for life.

But life is now, yes, I know. I am aware.

However for some reason I'm in a bit of a stall mode at the moment.

Or maybe I'm just impatient.

I've spent nearly seven years not working outside the home and I'm dying to get out there and work. But at some point, the whole work-life balancing act will topple over, and I don't know yet what the set point is.

And I realize the ridiculousness of having the luxury of a CHOICE about working part or full time.

So I guess I suck right now, in terms of attitude.

But I feel like I'm hovering around the fringes of everybody else's lives: my husband's, my kids', my sometimes colleagues. (When you sub, you're not really on faculty, but you're not really NOT on the faculty. And when you're a parent at said school, the lines get reaaaally blurry.)

I don't really fully hang out with most of the moms at the school (except for one extra cool mum I know) and I don't really fully hang out with the teachers, since I'm not part of the full time employee pool.

So maybe part of the waiting place feeling has to do with a shifting identity. Where do I belong? As humans, we are inherently tribal, and I guess maybe all I'm really saying is I'm looking for my tribe.

I was telling my best friend some of this today on the phone (Hi Hayn!) and we were wondering, since we are DEFINITELY of the same tribe: how do we manage day to day without the support and comfort of one another when we're immersed in all these other tribes to which we don't feel we really belong?

What IS a sense of belonging, anyway? I think it has to do with being accepted, understood, validated. This is why I can honestly say that my family is one of my tribes. But we all have more than one tribe. And I'm just kind of dancing around the edges of a lot of other people's cozy tribes.

And I feel distinctly uncozy.

Like I am waiting for something to happen.

What, I don't know.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?