Venting some frustration

I need to vent:  I'm not mad at any one person, except me...

If I had known 10 years ago what I know now I would have changed back then. I'd be in a better position in life by now, I think.   But you know what?  I might have totally wasted 10 years, ages 30-40, but I like who I am now.  What I don't like is suddenly feeling like I'm being stuffed back into my insecure teens and 20's.

I like my hair dark, so I put it back dark today.  Phooey on all those highlights or 'chunking' as it's called.  My mom called it 'frost'.  Frost is for old people and I'm not old.  If I do anything to my hair it might be a minimal highlighting but don't hold your breath.

I like to think and speak for myself.  I don't like people putting words in my mouth or making decisions for me.  I let people do that a lot when I was younger.  Let me bobble and fumble around and make some mistakes, how the hell am I supposed to figure me out if you do for me what would be right for you?

I'm doing my 'lifestyle change' my way.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't do fads.  I might experiment with altering a fad to fit the way I want to do things, my perogative.

I've been given plenty of leeway on making things work at work.  I like that.  I like to stand on my own two feet.

I'll tell you what else I don't like.  It's being flat broke.  I hate telling my kids we don't have money to do something or buy something they'd like to do or have. They rarely ask for anything.  Caleb broke my heart a few years ago when he broke his arm. He didn't want to go to the emergency room because he knew we couldn't afford it.  It appalls me to even admit that.  Grant told us last year he couldn't think of anything he wanted for himself for Christmas.  Neither one of them has offered to make a list this year for Christmas.  They've watched us and my parents struggle with challenge after challenge after challenge this year.  We keep thinking, okay, things have got to get better and they only worsen. Where's the bottom of this stupid abyss?  Are we there yet????

We keep doing the same thing over and over and over again expecting a different result...isn't that the very definition of insanity?

It's time to do something different and I have no clue what that would be or where to start if I did. I am my own worst enemy and I am where I am now because of decisions I made, actually I let someone else make them for me up until the last 3 years, I've been gaining /making up ground ever since.  But I'm stuck now.  How the heck do I get unstuck?