Our Modern Dilemma

Our Modern Dilemma

Today's Modern Super-Woman?

I remember long ago now it seems, reading about the pressures that modern women felt - feeling as if they had to be the perfect wife, perfect mom, perfect care giver, while at the same time, trying to take on the new frontiers of being the successful business/working woman.

I feel I am in that kind of space and wonder if this is also true for a lot of other women? And maybe even men. That is likely I think as I don't think this is a gender-specific thing (yay for evolution!!!)

The inner pressure I feel is not exactly the same as that mentioned above. Rather it is the latest modern version of it. In today's clime where so many of us are on the internet in one form of social group or another, we get exposed to a lot of ideas, inspirations, achievements, and little windows into many lives.

Just from a beading, crafting, jewelry making perspective .... all these people I have "met" who make the most incredible creations in all kinds of mediums or who are forever finding new sources, new techniques, new challenges to do. Some of them have kids, other businesses, other jobs, or home careers. Many have health issues.

For every one of them ... be it because they can do a craft I have not learnt, or that they can do a technique I don't know, or they are masters at a specific style, or that they hold multiple jobs, or that they can take great photographs, or that they had surgery and still can produce such wonderful feats of creation .. or that there is a new technique/store/tool/idea/variation that who and who have tried and I have not ... I end up feeling I should be able to do more. That in comparison to all these other women (and men) .... I don't do enough. So I must not be effectively using my time or I am too lazy or .. well, something must not be right with me. I can and should do better.

So I try to do more. Join more forums. Do another blog. Read up on. Research and find out about. Have to know. Should know. Must do. Have to do. List of yet to dos. And on and on it goes. And as I watch the list of things I have yet to do, should do, ought to do ... as I watch the list of incomplete projects and tasks that I cannot find time nor energy for ... I feel I am sliding backwards. Being less able than if I had never attempted - which is not a choice as so many do so much more than me. Or so it seems.

So I wonder .. is this the modern "illness". We are in the biggest candy store in the world ... the world on the internet. We have limited energy and time but all of a sudden we need to divvy that up into a zillion blogs of interest, facebook, myspace, twitter, forums, challenges, contests, shops, build own websites, make this, make that, did you see, have you seen, did you vote, have you had your say, .. and all the time, more gadgets, more videos, more "friends", more stores, more gadgets, more "time-savers", more "must-reads", are thrown at us ... promising to save us time, make life easier, give us back quality. All these "goodies" every minute of everyday on the internet.

Have you ever been in a candy store so large that it leaves you spinning? unable to decide? too much to cope? That for me is what my life has become.

I feel I must, should, ought to be able to do all these things that other people can do. And though they too cannot do ALL of it, I feel I should be able to do the sum total of what each of them can do.

And that is why I have so many things in every direction and I can no longer cope with all of them. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. And what makes this so hard is that I feel like the alcoholic who has to admit for the first time he is an alcoholic. It is hard to admit that I cannot cope when I think I am not doing enough or am successful enough yet to admit I have no more time or energy to spare.

I don't know for sure if other "modern-day" people out there are feeling these kinds of inner pressure. I am. And I know that irrespective of what it might seem to other people, I need to cut back on all the things I think I should do. I need to bring my splintered energies home and heal it in un-splintered directions. And whether I know it or not, "the Universe is unfolding as it should" and that relatively it is not much what I do in this world, I am a child of the Universe and I have a right to be here.