It's Not Always Rainbows and Butterflies: A Day in the Life of a 20-Something

First and foremost, thank you all dearly for your sweet comments on my last post.  You are all too kind, and it's refreshing to know that I'm not alone in my quarter-life identity crisis/rants.  I assure you I'm not always so moody, but apparently those days are when the mood to write strikes most often. 

The silver lining in all this?  I am discovering all the things that I love- I am drunk on the possibilities that my imagination unravels.  I am inspired by the mundane to transform it into the extraordinary. My biggest problem is that I want to go, go, go and do, do, do... yet I am still transfixed by this societal notion of being perfect.  I can admit that my biggest fear is failure, but more often than not I set myself up for failure by not trying. Or, when I do try, I am putting in minimal effort so that I have an excuse when I do fail, or at least my disappointment has a just cause.  In essence, I am so afraid of failure that I allow myself to fail- a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will?

When life started to get tough a few years ago, when I was diagnosed with depression, I ran away from my problems--school, the one thing that defined me, was over; my job was leading into dead-ends; and my first love was unreciprocated. It was almost as if I was afraid of being bad at being depressed, so instead of confronting my issues, I ran away from them. When things weren't going my way in California I allowed those doubtful  "she's never going to make it out there," voices come creeping in.  If people expected me to fail, then there's no one to disappoint, right?  Except the biggest person of all, me.

It's been two months since I've been back home and it's pretty apparent through my last post that I'm not really happy with the state of my life right now.  I was watching Love Happens tonight with my mom, and at one point in the movie the main character Burke, who is a conflicted self-help guru, is telling his patients to "stop looking in the rear view mirror,"  that it's time to move forward and on with their lives.  It really struck a chord with me.

I got to thinking-- yes, California was wonderful.  I made some great friends and memories I will cherish for a lifetime.  It was what I needed this past year, to refocus on me.  But California happened, and it's over, and right now my life is back in Ohio.  I can continue living in the past- reliving the "glory" and being stagnant in the present while grasping at ways that would get back to the west coast.  Or, I can buckle up for the rocky road that is getting on with my life, here. In Ohio.

It's time to confront those issues that I ran away from.  I was unhappy with my job two years ago- enough that I was walking away from the one company I had spent my whole life dreaming of working for.  Why?  Why did I let school define me? Was it because it's so easy to say "I'm a business major," and that guarantees me a perfect cubicle life post-8am classes?  So when that didn't happen, was there was nothing left to define myself by?  If my love wasn't reciprocated then why was I holding onto this failed relationship, willing to give it another chance- perpetuating the heartbreak?  Any why is failure such a prominent theme in my life?

For two months I have been having this battle-- and maybe I'm being a little hard on myself.  There is a huge part of me that just wants to say, "screw it all," and go do all the things I want to do. Like travel the world and write a memoir, and be the next Elizabeth Gilbert.  But then there's the fact that I have student loan debt up to my eyeballs because I thought buying an education guaranteed success, or the fact that I can't even start writing a memoir because I've never taken a class on writing and ohmygod-it-might-be-terrible.  See? These are the thoughts that run through my head.  Then there are other days where I really miss the corporate structure, the corporate culture, and overall feeling of success and accomplishment, and I decide I want back in the action more than anything. But then I remind myself that my degrees are so specialized in sport marketing and that's not what I really see myself doing long-term, and that it's a crummy job market and I have too much education and experience for entry-level work, and ohmygod-no-one-will-hire-me.

Can you see in both instances where this perfectionism is paralyzing? This innate fear of failure results in me Not. Even. Trying.  I spend all night lying awake with stress, and spend all day staring at the computer not knowing where or how to begin. It all reached a boiling point early this week, hence my last post.  I really hope this explains that I'm not crazy.

Or, maybe it explains just how crazy I am.  But I really hope it's the former.

Tonight I made the first step, and cemented my plans of staying in Ohio.  I'm not going to run away anymore. Next, I need to find the girl inside of me that used to take a full course load, work a student-aide job, work part-time as a waitress, and also interned.  That hard-worker is still there.  After that, I need to find the girl inside of me that applied for the same internship three years in a row until she got it, three years later.  That competitive-streak is still there.  And after that, I need to find the girl inside of me that moved to California not knowing a soul, chasing after a life-long dream of moving away.  That risk-taker is there there.

So thanks for bearing with me, and as I shuffle through my problems and find my footing again, I promise to share with you more of the positives.  Because there's a lot of happiness in my life, too.