About me

Welcome! I’m Emma. I’m a traveler, a runner, an inventor, and apparently a forever-student.  I write and I teach and I’m usually enrolled in “maybe just one more class” because I truly love learning – and I also have another day job in which I’m paid to discover things. Overall? Things are cool.

I’m also a single mother to Ky, who recently became a college student, which makes me a recent empty nester. I can hardly believe that. I’m 40, and for some reason I’ve always pictured “empty nesting” to be synonymous with old age, retirement, gray hair and (weirdly) Winnebagos driven 15 mph under the speed limit by be-sunvisored Floridian snowbirds? Yeah? No? Moving right along…
A few facts about why I’m blogging:

  • I got pregnant in college, had a baby/toddler/young child throughout grad school, and have therefore always been WAY out of sync with my friends. While they were single and untethered and doing what college students will do, I was immersed in parenting.  Now at age 40, my friends are all at the life stage where they are parenting toddlers and young kids, while I am single and unthethered. Go figure. –> I would love to get to know people who are in my same life stage.
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  • I’m sloooooowly trying to figure out who I am now at age 40 outside of my persona as a mother. I remember the person I was at 21.  I’m not that person anymore. Not entirely. I have grown and changed, but the seed of that dreamer, traveler, inventor, adventurer is still inside of me, changing form, gathering substance, but still at the heart of me. Opening my eyes now to the world as it is for an individual person after 19 years of focus as a parent is … well, it’s scary. And exhilarating. And harder than I thought it would be. 
 

  • I’m also a runner! In 2011 I found myself wrestling with a bout of depression and my doctor recommended running to me. I scoffed and ignored him. When things got bad enough that I was willing to try anything, I half-heartedly started the Couch to 5K program, and (after a long while) found myself a complete running convert! I love it now. Running means the world to me, and I don’t know what my life would have looked like now if I hadn’t let running into my life. 

  • Because turning 40 and empty nesting wasn't enough of a life change for me, I also took the plunge and changed my career. Career transitions?  HARD.  I'm still working on it, and it's been two full years since making the first tentative move toward a much better life for myself. 

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