RE: Carmen

I got an email today from a friend that mirrored my own recent career frustrations. He and I wrote breifly about feeling "blah" and "questioning the point of your existence". We both have a feeling that we should be doing more with our lives, than just working to work.

I know I'm not currently leaving a dent in the world. My days are so robotic and I feel as though there is no meaning behind them. I could do, and be, so much more.

I'm not regretting anything, nor am I complaining about being employed at this company. I'm simply questioning where my next step should be. Which direction I should go, and what I am truly meant to be doing on this Earth.

I have been meaning to write a list of everything that moves me, all my passions, and then see what connections I can make between them. I might have to create a career, rather than following a path that was created before me.

I emailed this thought to my friend who told me that he expects a list from me tomorrow, and he will share his own. So, here's my list:

Art: Painting and crafting
Animal rescues and animal charity
Design (though my interest in this has faded a lot recently)
Furniture and furniture refinishing
Antiques
Writing
Reading
Organic farming
Gardening
Cooking


One thing that I have seriously considered (and even kind of started) is painting for charity. Like a certain percentage of the proceeds would go to charities, like breast cancer and animal welfare. The only thing I have done to start this is gathered a couple images and ideas to put onto canvas… I haven’t actually put anything down yet, for lack of time.

I would also love to write a book. I have no idea what I would write about, because I don’t have an interesting story in mind. I think that’s why I started my blog, because I figured that I would be writing about my own journey… but it’s no New York Times Best Seller … yet.

I used to think that I could make a living refinishing furniture and restoring or selling antiques. But the refinishing thing proved to be time-consuming and you kind of have to do it right, in a workshop, in order to get a quality product. Also dealing antiques implies that you have knowledge of old things. All I know is that they smell really weird and they look cool.

Furniture design was one thing I thought I wanted to do, too. I even started sketching, but I’d have to actually build it or find somebody who would build it for me. I don’t have any founds to buy material or machinery to do this.

You know those little flower shops? Not the stands, but the small shops? I think it would be cool to own one of those too. But I am not sure how passionate I am about that.

So, we'll see what I can come up with from this list. Maybe I'll think of something awesome if I keep brain-storming. Oh, and our email thread has a subject line of 'Carmen' because I was inquiring about a specific tile called Carmen, before we branched off into questioning the purpose of life... for some reason, I just think this is interesting.