What defines you?

Happy Saturday! Here in the Northeast it was a gorgeous day. I didn’t sleep much at all last night, waking up and panicking about things I didn’t get done at work this week and worrying about my husband’s unemployed status. This meant that I got a nice early start and was on the road to NJ by around 7:15. A sleepless night and a five hour drive alone gave me lots of time to think, and while I still feel panicky about work, I think I know a bit more about myself.

I am the type of person who wants to be the hardest working person in the office. I have spent many a night up until 11 or later working on projects. I check my work email when I wake up in the middle of the night. I pride myself on working hard and usually meeting impossible deadlines. But today I realized that since college I have not had more than 2 weeks off from working, and all during this time, I have defined myself by how I make a paycheck. My biggest fear in losing a job is not financial but rather what people will think of me, and even worse, what I would think of myself. The more I look at these thoughts, the more they seem a bit warped to me. In the scheme of my entire life, is work really what I want to define me? And if I decided to or was forced to not work for a couple of months, would that mean that there is nothing to me? Maybe its the European vs American difference between me and my husband that gives him such a laid back view toward this. He is the hardest working person I know, but his work is so far from who he is, its crazy. He is an engineer, interacting with machines and code all day, where he is actually warm and social and supportive and hilarious. His day to day is boring, technical, clinical. He is none of those things. I spent a lot of today thinking about what I WANT to define me. I am a good wife, friend, sister, and daughter. I want to be defined by the things I love, food, wine, volunteering and social service, running, adventure, love not by what my business card says or how my work day goes.

I think over the next week or so there is going to be a lot of thinking and talking going on in our household on what the future holds. Things happen for a reason, and a lot has happened lately.

As for today, I am just Auntie Mangen (from a 2 year old who can’t say Meghan), and I am defined by how many times I can go down a slide and how silly I can dance in the backyard. And that is good enough for me 🙂

What do you think defines you? Do you get caught up in parts of  life that aren’t really “you”?