The Wrong Trousers

Sometimes I wake up like Wallace in Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers feeling like I'm wearing a pair of robotic pants that have taken me down the street in the wrong direction for more years than I can tell. At least, emotionally I feel that way. It's not a depressing feeling, merely a melancholy one and it passes within a few hours. Always. Still, it happens. I know it has nothing to do with my life situation. I only feel better and better about that.

It's more like the feeling you get when you reach the end of a very good book and the author throws out one of those deeply moving lines that kinda gets you right here. And it is coupled with a feeling of wasted time. Sometimes I feel like I've wasted time in waiting to have kids. Then I remember all the things I can still do without having to find a babysitter or daycare. Sometimes I feel like I have wasted time in not finishing and trying to sell my book. Then again, I am still going strong on it. It will finish eventually. Sometimes I feel like I have wasted time not completing all my random projects and scrapbooks. Again, I'm not that broken up over them. Nor do I think that "wrong trousers" moments relate only to stuff I need to do.

No, it's more like the way the character Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) explained the "mean reds" in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. "Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of." Something like that, except that I'm not really that afraid. I'm more worried and spent, like I've used up all my emotional capital making choices that did not in the end complete the task I wanted to complete. In fact, they did not come near completing it. I'm just left wondering if I'll ever get it right or if I'm just so fundamentally flawed that I can't figure out what getting it right even means.