Things in the Skye: Ch-ch-changes! continued

Part Two

So here I am: in Houston, still essentially unemployed (thank the gods for extended unemployment benefits) and going through my savings faster than I like, and still feeling at sea and not feeling very different from when I lived in Oregon. And there is still the question of "What do I want to do?"

The answer to that is both simple and complicated: I want to write. Sure, I want to keep doing the technical/scientific thing. But I want to write fiction. Stories. Novels. That's what I've wanted all my life. And I've never had the guts, beyond some short stories. I haven't finished anything since I was thirty.

I still need self-confidence. I need to give myself credit for my accomplishments, rather than brushing them off. I need to stop grieving over my interminable solitary state and just "get over it." (Many people live alone, with few connections. They survive, dammit!) I want to be peaceful and happy, strong and confident. I want to do what I want to do and make a living at it, even if "it" is several things. I want to have fun, be myself, have courage, and stop comparing myself to everyone around me.

For example: While I should be crediting myself with the effort and courage it took to give up my stuff and leave a comfortable, if stifling, life, I am instead berating myself for not having done more. And I am telling myself that anyone could have done what I did and that I am a sniveling coward for thinking it was hard work.

While I have not found full-time, or even continual part-time, work yet, I have worked at very different kinds of writing and editing: I worked on a one-week freelance job at a creative services agency, and I worked for a local newspaper for a few months. And now I have a very small, very intermittent contract working for a science agency, doing work that is more hobby than job. I joined the local chapter of a professional society in November; since then I've attended two networking lunches and one meeting, plus a meeting for another professional society. Rather than celebrating myself for doing these things, I chastise myself for not doing them sooner.

I started a novel — my first! — and I cannot see the 35,000-plus words I have written; I can only see that I've done only that much within a year (within a couple of months, actually). Hell, I'm unemployed: I could have done tens of thousands of words more, given that I was doing 2,000 to 6,000 words a day on good days when I was writing daily.

I've been this way since I was a child: I have to get an A in everything, including how I walk, how I talk, and whether or not I choose to eat cookies before bed.

I have this dual personality. One side of me is original, a bit different. Well, a lot different in many ways. I'm an outlier* in the Normalcy curve. That side of me does things that other people consider odd, no matter how normal they seem to me. That side changes her life: goes back to school, moves without a specific target, thinks she can begin a creative writing career at forty-eight.

The other side of me is a pleaser, terrified that people won't like her or that she will do the wrong thing. That side is afraid that if she does something different and unexpected, such as having an unusual and successful life, people won't love her. I am so self-conscious, I compare everything I do to how everyone else is doing it, as if doing it differently will cause my immediate and painful death. When I lived at the beach, I couldn't walk down the beach without wondering if anyone in the nearby hotel was watching me and thinking I was weird. (My therapist never had me committed, so I guess is isn't insane.)

This has got to stop. I'm almost 49. Within speaking distance of 50. Life is much shorter now than it used to be, too short to not enjoy it with every cell in my body, every thought in my mind.

I want to be brave and take full credit for my bravery. I want to silence that voice that says "but you could have done more." I want to be confident and happy and healthy and simply in love with life. I want to stop being afraid, or at least stop letting the fear have any say in what I do. Well, I don't mind letting fear say "no, don't enter the tiger enclosure; it wouldn't go well." But I wouldn't mind bungee jumping again, just to once more prove to myself I can. Oh yeah, that's another thing I did. But do I think to myself "gee that was brave?" No. I think "well if I can do it, everyone can do it." I don't want fear to say "don't go into the city" because the city is big and complicated and unknown, or to say "you can't do that, you're too old/clumsy/sensitive/scared" when I most likely can do it, I just have to try. I don't have to live as if each choice is a lifetime commitment.

This then is my overall plan for change. I want to be a happier, more peaceful person, better at living, better at being truly myself, and living the life I want to live. By the time I hit fifty, I want to be firmly on my way there, if I'm not mostly there already.