50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind (part eight)

It's kinda crazy to think that it's been nearly a year since I last participated in answering the 50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind. Very hard to believe that life can just pass by without realizing... anyways, enjoy part eight and to recap, here are links to the previous answers.
(part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven)

36. Is it possible to know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil?
It's funny this question pops up at this time in my life - I'm currently reading the Beautiful Creatures books which is all about the light and dark of things.  Sometimes I feel unsure about questions like this... I do think there are grey areas of being good and bad... but when it comes to talking about evil - I feel like there are distinct lines that we're all (mostly) aware of.  I really tend towards believing that the majority of people are inherently good.  There are good people who continue to do good in the world and then there are good people who make bad decisions on occasion.  There are bad people out there that had every potential to be good until their upbringing screwed that up.  There are bad people who do awful things and then somewhere down the road have a change of heart.  I don't know... call me crazy or stupid or naive but I do believe that most people can recognize the difference between good and evil.  I may never understand what makes people do truly evil things - I assume there are a million different "reasons" - and most of the time I really want to sit down and understand where others are coming from to help me understand why they do what they do.


37. If you won a million dollars, would you quit your job?
I wonder that sometimes... if I was wealthy, would I still be interested in raising my children myself?  Would wealthy me be more comfortable with trusting someone else to raise my children right?  I mostly wonder these things after a hard day with the kids.  Or I think of all the less desirable duties stay-at-home parents have and I wonder what it would be like to be able to do all the good things and leave all the worse parts for someone else.  Overall, I really don't think I would trust someone else enough to handle my kids with the care my husband or I would show.  There is something so gratifying in knowing the parts of your children that you might not understand if you missed out on them constantly and staying home with Presley and Molly is a luxury in my book. (No matter how far from "luxurious" it ACTUALLY is!)

38. Would you rather have less work, or more work you actually enjoy doing?
I've thought a lot about this question, too!  Where I'm at in my life right now - which is putting my family first - I would rather have less work to do.  I want to be able to spend time together as a family and make as many memories as we can while we have our children to ourselves!  Once my kids are in school (if I'm not homeschooling them), I assume that I will have more time to work on myself and the professional goals I have for myself. 

I really do feel like ANYONE who works more than 40 hours a week is insane.  (Which, yes, includes my husband.)  Life is too short to live a life like that.  And really, I think 40 hour weeks are way too damn much, too!  Want to know why so many families are so messed up, in my opinion?  Somewhere along the way we stopped putting PEOPLE first and started putting things first.  There are people who are working so many hours just to scrape by.  There are other people working huge amounts of hours in order to have more things, nicer things, etc.  It's exhausting.  I wish our society, as a whole, could decide that people and relationships and loving others is what matters and that we could rework our systems to reflect those ideals.  I feel like our lives would be so much more gratifying.

39. Do you feel like you've lived this day a hundred times before?
In some ways, YES.  I feel like on certain issues I just am constantly bashing my head against a wall.  (see my above answer to #38... it's something that comes up in my life on a daily/weekly basis.)  I love my kids and the "work" I do with them (see my above answer to #37) - but HONESTLY, I feel like I am always just keeping myself busy until Tony gets home.  He works from 7am until 6pm five days a week.  Even though I love what I do with the kids - it can be completely exhausting doing it myself for 11 hours a day with no one to share it with (the ups, the downs, and everything in between).  Not only that, but I look forward to his companionship all day long.  So at the end of the day, it does feel like I am just living the same day over and over again and that I am in a period of my life where I am waiting for it to get better or something to give.  But in reality, THIS is my life and nothing is going to change itself anytime soon.  If I want something to change in order to make our day better while Tony is gone, I am responsible for making that happen.  That is both empowering while simultaneously making me feel a little sheepish.

40. When was the last time you marched into the dark with only the soft glow of an idea you strongly believed in?
It's been a while.  I feel like the last time I felt the feeling of jumping off a cliff towards something unknown and better was when Tony and I moved to Illinois a few years ago.  I come back to that moment in my life often because it was a big turning point for me as a person and for us as a couple (and I think for him as a person, too).  For some reason, I didn't feel that way when it was our time to move back to Memphis.  Maybe because it was less of a turning point in our life.  We were just picking up the family we had started and the life we were living and continued that here.  So to answer the original question, it has been 7.5 years since I had that feeling.

A photo of me & Tony the week before we moved to the Quad Cities after living in Memphis for a year.

A photo of me & Tony - about 365 days later - after having lived in the Quad Cities for a year.

Hope you found the questions and answers here to be thought provoking.  Anybody feel compelled to add anything?