Waiting For That Rocket

I was reading through the posts on the LiveJournal I had in college and it became abundantly clear to me: I’ve come a hell of a long way since then.

In college (probably before, definitely a good bit of time after), I was a train wreck. Things were just so wrong, in my head, in my heart and in the circumstances that broke me time and time again.

Somehow, though, I’ve managed to come out on the other side. As I learned while reading the old LJ, many of those feelings are not far below the surface. There’s still a lot of pain that has the potential to send me right down into that cesspool of depression.

A big reason for my emergence into the land of the sane has had to do with the friendship of some very specific people: AM, ER, DB, BF, MM, JM, EL. These people have had just an absolutely tremendous impact on my life. There are others, and many of you know how important you are to me, but I wouldn’t have opened myself up to the possibilities of other relationships if it hadn’t been for these core seven people.

By the end of the year, more than half of that group are going to be living in Europe. There’s a good chance that by spring, the rest of that group will have left Maine also.

I am scared shitless. I’ve taken a lot of risks over the past five years. Risks that, when in the darkest days, I would never have considered taking. And that’s because I knew I had this net that would be there to catch me, be there to love me, no matter what.

That net is going away.

I can’t help but think of this as kind of a test. I also think it’s a testament to just how far I’ve come that I’m thinking of it that way, because a test can be beaten. In the latest Star Trek flick, Spock may posit the possibility of no-win scenarios, but that’s not true to me.

My “family” may be flocking to Europe, but they’ve created a me that can handle being separated from the people I love.

That doesn’t stop the pain from knowing that I have to.

Words can’t express my thanks at the abilities that my friends have helped me to find in myself. I love them so incredibly much and wish them all the best in everything that they do.

I just wish they didn’t have to do it so damn far away.

For the past two weeks I have been more focused on a project than I think I have ever been before. At the very least for a really, really, really long time.

This is not a bad thing. My only…hang up. Is that I feel like there has been a shift of massive proportions in my life. I love retail. I could see myself being involved at some level in retail for a long time. But this is what I’ve discovered over the past couple weeks: I love writing. Not only do I love it, but I’m passably good at it. The more books I read, the more convinced I am that I could actually get published and actually have at least some moderate commercial success.

This thought is almost more unnerving than the possibility of working in Retail for the next forty years.

I don’t know how, but despite the love and support of my entire family, my friends, and a select few educators in my life, I have become all too conditioned to expecting failure. I don’t apply for jobs because I’ll never get them, I don’t do this because that may happen, etc. I never expect to succeed, so therefore I never try.

But now that I’ve discovered my passion for writing, and have a deep seeded belief that I can actually *do* this, I’m scared absolutely witless. Why is it that the fear of success is scarier than the fear of failure. Why is my generation so conditioned to expect failure that when that happens we’re not shocked, but when we earn success we doubt its legitimacy?

Well. I just survived my first official #nanowrimo “thing.”

I’m still scared witless, but a little less so.

I think I need to apply that first rule of Rachel’s improv class to this: “F*ck it.”

I just need to write. “Quantity over quality.”

Please feel free to remind me of this over the next 30 days.