My best friends father told us when I was 25 and she was 22 that it was OK that we had little to no direction in our lives, that it was ALRIGHT that we had shitty paying jobs that worked us to the bone, that "everything would work itself out" because we were just in a period of transition. This period in our lives-the post undergrad years, before marriage, before kids and the "real world" is called: "The Odyssey" (title aptly coined by our beloved NPR). This period of transition that I am sure is only intended to last until you-for lack of a more eloquent phrase- get your shit together.

Now I am thirty & married to an alcoholic.

My best friend is 27 & engaged to a workaholic.

And her father, after 30 years of marriage, is in the midst of a bittersweet divorce.

I would like shout to the mountain tops that I am no longer entrenched in this rhetorical nightmare called The Odyssey- but I am.

I continue to work long, hard hours for shitty money with very little definitive direction...and between the piles and piles of stuff I have accumulated in my house these past 5 years, and the gallons of knowledge (not to mention weight) I have gained- my shit is decidedly NOT TOGETHER and I am beset on all sides by this shape shifter that I only know by the name my best friend's father gave it.

And here is my beginning, the unwrapping, unravelling and ultimately revealing my Odyssey so far - and where it is taking me.

Because I have no idea.