Ever look at a map when you reach a location while hiking and it says, “You are here” along with a marking to show where you are?

I wish I had a marker like that right now.

Ultimately, I’m feeling frustrated.

I feel sort of stuck in life right now, but not in a hamster-running-a-hamster-wheel sort of way. More like when you’re in slow traffic and you’re anticipating being able to move forward, more quickly, soon. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. Before me is such a huge adventure, and all I have to do is jump.

But I feel afraid. What if when I jump I find that there’s a chain that drags me back so that I just flop over the edge of the cliff instead of diving off into the sky and flying into the clouds? Chained by old trauma, chained by lack of experience and knowledge to even know how to do what I want to do at all, chained by a lack of money or means?

What if I take the plunge and go to college, and then attempt to move back to Arizona or somewhere else, only to run out of money and end up back home in Missouri, in my parent’s basement? (don’t get me wrong, they have built me a nice apartment down here, I’m very grateful for it).

What if I take the plunge and try voice acting, like I have recently been dreaming about? What if I stink and everyone makes fun of me? (I guess the silver lining there is that, even if they do, no one starts perfect, we all have a journey towards becoming great at something.)

And what about writing graphic novels? I can just feel an itching to write one sometimes, but then I don’t know how to begin. Do I write a script? Do I just drive right into making the panels and pages and then string them all together into some sort of cohesive whole? I begin a script and that seems to slow me down, but I’ve never gotten beyond a few pages of comic before. Then again, I haven’t really given myself the chance to try again in a long time. Maybe a vague outline would work as a start.

There are times when I worry that my whole journey is going to continue on like that—I feel an inspiration to go on a grand adventure, only to stop and turn around right after I take a few steps out the door.

Maybe I’m like Bilbo Baggins from the Hobbit and I just need to choose to go, even if everyone else has already started without me.

Tags: JustMe, AllPosts