Go Ahead and be Excited! (Or Don’t Be)

So my friend Suki told me I should tell you the thing that’s been challenging me but I don’t want to.  Because as much as these little essays are by me, for me, about me, I kinda hope that a little bit they might make you think about you and be relatable in some way.  And specifics get on the way of that.  Like who really cares what the thing is — there’s a project, an endeavor, a challenge, I’m doing it, part of me doesn’t want to keep going, part of me does, different priorities and values come into play.  

We’ve all got those moments where it’s like, add on vs. not add on.  Keep going this way or move that way.  And the stress of being in the corridor, the stress of changing it up, the stress of backing away from a decision that seemed good but then wasn’t.  Maybe.  So I don’t want to cloud the (hopeful) relatability of all that with my particular whatever.

And that’s the feel-good reason for not being explicit.  The less ego-gratifying reason is I’m embarrassed — embarrassed to be taking something like this on, embarrassed to be having some anxiety hiccups about it, embarrassed that I might quit before I really get started, embarrassed that I might keep going even though so much of what I purport to be about is not feeling yucky, and I’ve told everyone there clearly has been a correlation between pursuing this thing and feeling yucky.  So. 

So. With that out of the way, I’ll tell ya what I’m doing.  Please do not get excited because I continue to reserve the right to not continue, and if I choose to not continue I don’t want to feel embarrassed.  Oh wait, how you feel about what I’m doing is none of my business.  So I take it back, go ahead and be excited if you’d like to be.  And then, later, you can be disappointed or not as you see fit.  It’s exhausting being back in that headspace of trying to manage other people’s opinions of me rather than just being me, in the presence of others, and letting the chips fall where they may.  

And so my ongoing experiment of public revelation continues:  I have enrolled in an online graduate program that, if I continue for many years and jump various hurdles, could result in becoming a licensed therapist. Yup.  So now you know.  

And the why I’m doing that is because when I needed help as a kid and as an adult, therapists were the people I was sent to, and then sent myself to.  Some were okay, some were really horrible, and some were life-changing.  So I’d like to think I’d be one of the helpful ones, not in a save-the-world kind of way but if someone lands in my zone they might feel better rather than worse.  So it’s a concept, we’ll see what happens.  I’m gonna keep going.  

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