I went for bloodwork the other day and overheard a conversation between two women who must have been around my mom’s age. They were chatting about their grandchildren, retirement, and their husbands. One woman retired recently, while the other was wearing her work uniform.

“I like my job. I like talking to people and getting out of the house. What would I do if I retired?” she said.

“Oh you’ll find things do to. You’ll have grandchildren or travel,” the other woman replied.

“Travel? Ha! We work all our lives so that we can travel when we retire and look.” She pointed at herself, “Who is going to travel when they’re old like this.”

The women laughed as my heart sunk into my stomach.

Since my last post, I’ve had one existential crisis after another. Unsure what I want to do next with my life. When we went to Old Montreal at the end of April, I seriously contemplated upending our lives and moving there. I know that I want to try living somewhere else for a while, working in a new city, traveling (even though I am not a great traveller). There’s so much I want to see in this world and my beige cubicle is starting to get to me.

I’m still doing my 5 AM writing sprints and getting nowhere with this new novel, or so it seems. More than once in the last few months, I sat at the island in my kitchen and wondered if there was any point in putting these words on paper. I’ve debated sleeping in, giving myself a break, giving up writing altogether. How does anyone with a full time job have time or energy to write? What are your secrets? How do you keep going? It’s too hard, it’s too lonely, and novels take too long. I’ve been plugging away for years and I don’t know what I have to show for it. Even the rejections from the novel I’ve been querying have dried up. And as much as they hurt, they also made me feel like I was DOING the thing. I was trying.

Mother’s Day was tough for me this year (that was not on my 2025 bingo card either). I guess it’s just social media in general but watching all of the Mother’s Day posts made wonder what the heck I’m going to do with my life if I’m not going to have children. I still have no desire to have them but the older I get, the more aware I am of it one day not being a choice anymore.

I feel like I’m running a race I don’t care to win and yet, I don’t know what else I should be doing.

xo Vanessa