My wallet’s gone missing…

My wallet has gone missing and I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself as I contemplate the mountain of work this will make for me.

I have waited almost two days to cancel everything, on the hopes that I will find the wallet somewhere in my house or that some kind soul will turn it in and it will make its way back to me. As the hours progress after I’ve turned my home upside down and crawled around with a flashlight the floor of the movie theater where I suspect the wallet dropped out of my purse, I can feel the hope dwindling in my mind and spirit.

It feels like this is about more than just the wallet.

It’s I need to become a bit tougher in general. I like to think of myself as tough enough, but if I tell the truth I remain a relatively sensitive person who really wants to think the best of people. I am not always happy, of course, no one is, but recently I’ve been feeling like my shining optimism is what will get me through—that it’s a magic bullet that makes me persevere and succeed, sometimes against the odds.

And now my wallet not finding its way back to me is challenging the optimism I normally feel.

What am I to do? The first thing I’ve done is borrow money from my kids (with interest, until I replace all my cards) to steal myself away to my favorite local café and write. I feel like I will burst if I don’t make something good happen today—something that will make me feel like I am succeeding despite the odds. It’s feeling like I haven’t been creating enough lately, just going through my days buffeted by what is happening to me instead of being deliberate with my time and creating what I want to from my life.

And now, when I should be filing a police report and contacting all the credit card companies, I am instead escaping to create.

I feel totally irresponsible, and also I feel like if I don’t do it this way it will be like gasping for air. At the end of the week I’ll be off for a week in the mountains, unplugged, with my family; a much needed respite from the day-to-day and end-of-school-year scurry. We all have our stories about what makes live stressful at times, I won’t bother you with the details of mine but suffice it to say that I have three “holidays” plus school ending in the space of one week. I always feel like I’m running the gauntlet until that week of the year is behind me.

Couple that with a recent one-day stay in the hospital (everything is fine) and some strenuous work travel, and it’s clear that I really could use a break to rejuvenate my energy.

I find myself trying to get behind the feeling of “perhaps the person who found it needed what I had in my wallet,” and that it is a way of giving to a less fortunate person. But, truth be told, that doesn’t really fly with me. I find myself hoping that the wallet was just overlooked and is just in some trash compactor somewhere, versus in the hands of someone who could do something worse with the materials in there, like steal my identity. I honestly don’t know if I have the strength to deal with something like that.

But, I have been through worse. That is of comfort now. And I know things will get better.

(Update: My wallet has been returned—with everything intact—and my faith in humanity is restored.)