I Never Thought I'd Still...

I ran into a neighbor who owns a dance studio as she was pulling fancy ballet costumes out of the laundry. Having seen her do this before, I said, "Ahh, the costumes," to which she replied that she hadn't imagined she'd still be doing this at this point in her life. Perhaps she thought that by now, she would have an assistant who laundered the costumes, or an infinite budget for dry cleaning them. But, arts budgets and arts funding being what they are, she found herself still putting costumes in the laundry room washer.
 
"I never imagined I'd still be doing this at this point in my life." How many of us have said this in reference to one thing or another? We hadn't thought we'd still be refining a résumé, hadn't thought we'd still be unsure of what we wanted to do with our lives, hadn't thought we'd still be scrambling to pay bills or get household chores done each week. Often, life just doesn't turn out quite the way we imagined. And yet, we move on. My neighbor, the dance teacher, still washes the costumes for her studio's shows, and it is clear that she does it with great care, even if she might wish she had help. We renegotiate work and home tasks weekly, because that's just how it is. We don't always get to choose what we are doing at any stage in our lives, but we do get to choose how we handle what we find ourselves "still doing."
 
And I would like to think we end up with results we are proud to show off, just like the dance teacher with her costumes.