“As Soon as I Settle I Bet I’ll Be Able to Move On”

It probably will come as no shock to anyone who knows me to hear that I’m feeling restless right now. I just bought a house and started my career so of course I’m ready to get a move on and go try my hand at something new. But in the spirit of truth, that’s not even the issue this time. That’s not the real thing I’m struggling with in my head.

The real issue is that I know, this time, I’m not going to change a damn thing. I know that I’ve found a place I can be happy for a long while, as well as a career that I actually enjoy, for the first time in my life. Under former circumstances I’d be ready to bail right about this point because I’d have started to get bored. Disinterested with the predictable nature of everyday life.

When I get to the moment where I’ve taken it all in, absorbed as much as I can from the job/place/lesson at hand, I start feeling antsy. Anxious. Skittish. Ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

But not this time.

The feeling is a leftover; its cold and moldy like that last piece of meatloaf you forgot about, shoved to the back of the fridge. It used to be trapped somewhere in the back of my head convincing me I should stay the scared little girl who never accomplishes anything because she isn’t really worth enough to try. Broke, only moderately attractive, no big show-and-tell story to share with the drama-obsessed world. Kind of a middle of the road nobody if I’m being honest.

I was the one who didn’t finish college and never had a “real” job. The self-proclaimed slacker, lazy, procrastinator type who never seems to get what she wants because she’s too fucking scared to tell anyone what that is.

Always living in fear that I might get exactly what I want out of life if I just pursue it with reckless abandon because then where would I be? I’ve been “chasing the dream” for so long maybe I felt I couldn’t function without a dream. Maybe I felt if I got it then I wouldn’t have a need to continue on. There wouldn’t be any more dreams.

But of course we all know that’s complete bullshit.

So then why am I antsy if I’m comfortable with the discomfort of setting down some roots in these areas of my life?

Because it’s a new feeling. The feeling of knowing I could go back on my heels and haul-ass out of this whole writing life but wanting to stick it out is uncomfortable because of the newness. I’ve never done it before.

After close to forty years of programming myself to believe that I have to keep moving forward – where “forward” used to describe moving on – I’m not entirely sure how to handle moving forward while remaining satisfied with what I’m doing.

Scary? You bet. Necessary? More than I could explain.

The best advice would be to just keep doing it, of course. So I am. Every single day.

Instead of going out and starting in another dead-end job situation, or moving again, I’m doing other things to keep that freshness. Entering writing contests, getting up and speaking at my writer’s group, connecting with new people, giving interviews, asking people to review my book after they’ve read it. Essentially, going after what I want. Boom.

But most of all – asking for what I want, knowing that I deserve to have it, and then going out and getting it. Because life’s too short to stop talking altogether because I sit around worrying if I offended someone with something I said once. It’s too short to sit back and constantly observe what others are doing while never doing anything of any substance myself.

Life’s too short not to make it exactly what I want it to be.

I mean, hell, everyone else is doing it and they don’t give a damn if I approve so I think it’s high time to start living for me. Fuck em if they can’t appreciate that.

I owe it to Indie Authors everywhere to kick ass and take names (of Agents preferably, though with all these adverbs…). I owe it to Matt to do my best to get this thing off the ground after so much support these past couple years.

Most of all I owe it to myself because this twenty-five year dream got clouded with the needs and desires of everyone else coming before my own somewhere along the way. But this is my life and it’s time to clear that fog. Time to open my eyes and see my own life path. Time to take it.

Title of this post is a quote from a Fiona Apple lyric in “The Way things Are”