These three creatures gnaw at me. An idea for my novel will come to me when I’m supposed to be reading a report for work. A blog post for CU or an idea for a survey will come to me while I’m driving through some town or neighborhood.  Infinite ideas for this blog and other websites come to me as I hurl myself through my day at work, my home life with the GF or while I’m driving, talking on the phone, or cooking dinner. These projects are with me 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Rain or shine, sleeping or awake. They haunt me.

My novel characters talk to me.  I promise them that their stories won’t languish on my virus infected laptop. That one day, I’ll at least compile their various Word documents into some semblance of order, change all the language from 1^st person to 3^rd, upload the whole damn thing onto Google Docs so that A. I can share it with my “editors” my BFF and the GF. (who are both waiting patiently) and B. so that I can work on it from work wherever.

I’m not kidding when I say I have notebooks and Word Docs and Google Docs galore of half-finished blog posts, and pictures on my phone, camera and computer of things I want to put on tumblr and flickr.

Every day at work I stare, (sometimes aimlessly) at the computer screen, absorbing inconsequential tidbits of news. I lament the fact that I’m an internet whore that just won’t quit. That I CAN”T get anything accomplished despite the fact that  I have these three things that are screaming inside my brain for attention. These things that I say I care about, but whom I neglect badly while I read the latest on twitter. I feel guilty. How dare I not spend my free time devoted to my work.

Now I think my subconscious is getting involved.

Over the past few weeks (maybe months) I’ve been having horrible, horrible nightmares. These are not my garden variety nightmares of devils attacking or me running from some unseen terror.  In these new nightmares, I’ve killed (or been privy to) the deaths of my siblings. Repeatedly. In these nightmares, I’ve watched them get attacked by snakes, lizards, a faceless friends, and finally, the unseen terror in the closet.  I’ve had dreams about going to weekend long family funerals, of someone being buried in the backyard, of multiple car crashes.  I had a nightmare that two of my uncles were fighting over money and somehow it was all my fault. Last night, I had two dreams.  In one, I was a dolphin in a dolphin family.  And in the other, I was fighting zombies like Lara Croft.

And those are just the dreams that I wake up and can recount. I have also had several dreams about transporting people in tubes across dimensions of space and time, and about medieval (or 22^nd Century) weapon technology, but I can’t remember all the details.

I, my therapist, and the GF, (bless her heart with infinite patience) have analyzed my dreamscape to death. Thank goodness that the GF is training to be a therapist since she’s had to listen to me talk about all the death and destruction that I go through most nights.

According to Freud, Jung, and the whole gang of therapy experts, dreams are our subconscious trying to tell us something about ourselves and our surroundings. Each part of the dream (even the parts played by other people) are symbolic pieces of ourselves.

After a bit of research, I was relieved to know that I’m not dreaming of the deaths of my siblings.  But I was horrified to know that I’m dreaming of the death or destruction of parts of myself.  I’ve taken some time to think about what part of my personality is represented by my siblings.  The answer came to me a few weeks ago as I stared at the ceiling in the middle of the night, refusing to go back to sleep after having a dream where I watched my sister get choked by an unseen hand from the closet. All of a sudden it hit me, I sat up in bed and using my cell phone light, wrote it quickly in my journal (scaring the GF half to death in the process).  My siblings are my legacy. They are the pieces of me that will live on after I’m dead.

My siblings are the reason I don’t want children. (And I mean that in a good way) As the oldest, I spent my childhood caring for them; reading to them, keeping them out of trouble, beating up their bullies, helping them with homework, making their lunches over the summers, making sure that they were ok. I consider them as much mine as my mother’s.  By watching my siblings die in my dreams, I witnessed the death of my legacy. Without them, no part of me lives on.

In one of the dreams, my cousin (who happens to be a a loud mouth) gives birth to a stillborn child, while I lay on the hospital bed beside her, unable even to birth the thing I could see moving inside me.  I think the dead and unborn babies refer to the unfinished projects and notebooks of ideas that I haven’t been working to GIVE BIRTH TO. My dreams are telling me that I need to stop talking, and start taking action.  It would be shame if my ideas die before I can do anything about them. I can’t depend on my siblings to be my legacy (somehow my mother thinks it’s cheating to consider them my children anyway). Only I am the master of my legacy.

Crazy, huh? The brain is a marvelous and mysterious hunk of meat.

In January, I wrote a very vague post about something that I was doing but wasn’t ready to talk about. Later I tweeted about having really great news but not being able to talk about it until I told the GF and my mom.

At this point, I’ve told everyone (and I do mean everyone) IRL that truly needed to know. I mean, there are some things that some people just should not learn from reading this blog.

So now I’m ready to tell you.

In January (with 2 weeks to application deadline) I decided to apply to Divinity School. Yeah, I know I said I was done with school for a while, yeah I know I JUST finished MPA school. Yeah, I know I curse like a sailor and talk crap about the church. Yes, I know, I know, I know. And I’m sure in the lead up before I leave the cube and return to the academy, you’ll know all the answers to these questions and more.

But now, the beginning.

Completing the seminary application form was a life changing experience. I went through about 20 iterations of my application essay. I struggled over which aspects of my personality and experiences where most important for the Candler admissions committee. I contemplated telling them how I really felt about the church and how I hoped to change it. I added and deleted and added again, sections about blending the MPA and MDiv, my undergraduate experience, and my work experience. I even wrote a section about Gen Y. I had 4 friends (graduates and current divinity students) read my essay. The GF and I LIVED and BREATHED my Candler essay for weeks. I went back and forth over my purpose in attending Divinity School, and second guessed whether it was the right thing to do.

In the end, I decided to put my best foot forward, tell them as much about myself and my personal spirituality as possible (even linking to my blogs), push the submit button, and leave it in the hands of the Divine.  I decided that if I got in, it was meant to be. And if I didn’t get it, so be it.  Then I tried (unsuccessfully) not to obsess about it.

If you happen to read my bio on Brazen, you’ll see that years ago [it desperately needs to be updated], I said that I would study Religion if I didn’t have to work for a living. Well, I’ve been working for a living for almost a year now, and I hate every minute of it.  I decided to screw what I’m supposed to do, and concentrate of creating a life that would make me happy to live it.

I’ve been an amateur theologian and wisdom dispenser my entire life.  My childhood was spent memorizing bible verses, attending revivals and getting my PK friends into trouble. I was THE CHURCH GIRL.  And back then I hated it because I wanted to be like everyone else. 

By high school and college, I was the person people came to with their problems. I was still Church Girl but I was slowly learning to filter out all the church BS and help people in a practical way.

Today, my religious background is an undeniable part of who I am.  Biblical literature and religious trivia is one of the few things that I get truly geeky about. I could write a book (and I just might) on everything that I think is wrong with Christianity and all that I think the western world could learn from other world religions.  Sitting in a Systemic Theology class at Candler almost had me wet my pants in excitement. Reading Candler’s course catalog nearly had me in a dead faint.

I’ve spent the past 10 years trying to figure out who I am and how I want to spend my time. I found my purpose for helping people while working with citizens in local government, MPA school introduced me to urban problems like housing and community development and gave me the technical background to be effective in those areas, and seminary will nurture the caring and compassionate part of my personality that I will need to tackle the “people-side” some of those and other large social problems.  Each step I make gets me just a little bit closer, like I’m making increasingly smaller concentric circles. 

Each experience, even my current job, adds something to my professional toolbox and gives me the opportunity to learn something about myself, the world I live in, and my place in the mix.

I’m excited to say that Candler decided that my love of social justice and my decidedly untraditional brand of spirituality is a good fit for their program. Last week I sent them my deposit.

It’s official. I’ll be attending Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in the Fall.

I have several half written blog posts that *one day* will make here for your reading pleasure, but today I’m just going to share a few posts that  resonated with me in a very special way. So without further ado.

Blogs that made my day.

Being by Doniree:  Found via (Genpink): I love this post so much that, not only do I want to print it and read it lots, I also want to copy it.  Not word for word, but I want to copy the style of it and create my own “I am” piece.

You Already Have Everything You Need by Jenny Blake: I’m not sure whether I have a humongous girl crush on Jenny or if this is just hero worship but I love her.  This post is the answer to all of my angst filled “why can’t I just get over myself and do something” posts.

How To Be Creative At Work by Penelope Trunk: She kind of lost me in the middle with all the high brow vs low brow commentary, but the last paragraph sums up the trouble that I think I have finding work in organizations and how I feel today about the work I’m not allowed to do at work. Sometimes our pre-conceived idea of what is acceptable or what we need causes us to miss out on the gems that are amazing but don’t quite fit what we’re looking for.

Empty Spaces (and Moving Past Loneliness by Jenny Blake: (Told you that I love her!) I love this post because I can relate. Moving to Atlanta was incredibly hard. I left a lot of my “I’ll be at your door in 15 minutes” friends in NC, and haven’t really filled that space yet. So now when the GF and I are involved with different things, and I can’t get someone on the phone, I find myself really alone for the first time ever. It’s f’ing scary and I hate it but those times teach me to be comfortable with and by myself.

Rescued by a Social Justice Christian by KT_Writes: As I struggle to reconcile my spirituality with the other parts of my personality, I crave wisdom from other people who succeed in that endeavor. Kristin is a great example of Christian done right. And this post exemplifies points about Christianity that many Christians fail to remember. Jesus is about service and helping others and feeding the poor. And that’s all social justice is.

Kevin Powells “Open Letter to Black America” by Sista Toldja: I really like this letter.  It speaks to several issues: Spiritually, Health, Community Economic Development, and Urban land development issues that I care deeply about and that I worry don’t get the “air play” that they deserve. I also believe that while this letter was aimed specifically at Black folk, there are a lot of poor Asian, Hispanic, Latino and other folk who need to read/hear/see it as well.

We tweeting briefly and she asked me what’s been going on in my life lately. And I replied like a smart aleck,“I’m full of angst as usual. Trudging upstream. Surrounded by mediocrity”

I thought Holly would laugh it off, or commiserate before moving on to the next topic.  She didn’t.  Instead she asked me what I’m going to do to change it.

After I gasped in shock and horror, I scrambled for a reply. I wanted to reply in a way that didn’t make me look like the lame asses around me that I deplore but I wanted to be truthful and not say something that could come back later and bite me in the ass. So I replied with an only-slightly BS line about “working on some things and making some connections” when in reality I spend most of my time lamenting the fact that I’m not writing much, and watching TV on Fancast and Netflix.

But having been posed that question by Holly, I started to really think about the things that I dislike about my life and all the stuff I’m not doing to change it.  And I realized something. I’m incredibly lazy and beset by inertia.

Inertia, according to Wikipedia, is the resistance of an object to change its state of motion.

“The vis insita, or innate force of matter is a power of resisting, by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavors to preserve in its present state, whether it be of rest, or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.”

Before I get all over my head in science world, basically this means that as much as I think I’d like to change certain aspects of my life (or even myself) at least a part of me is comfortable here.

A less science-y example:  This past weekend in Atlanta was gorgeous. 74 degrees, sunny. It was an amazing glimpse of Spring and I loved every second of it. But over the past few months, I’ve gotten used to wearing a coat, gloves, scarf and hat and walking around outside in just my regular clothes and a small sweater made me feel exposed and incomplete.  And I HATE bulky winter outerwear.

But it just goes to show you how easily behaviors and mindsets can become ingrained and how things, even the things that we hate, can become the norm.

There are lots of things I want to do, but every time I make a little progress, something (usually my own negativity) pulls me back into inertia.

I don’t have a solution to my inertia problem; if I did I’d be 50 pounds lighter, have written a book or two and would be chilling in Costa Rica. I know you are probably thinking (like I often do) Why don’t you just get off your ass and DO something.

I only wish it were that easy. Inertia is a powerful thing. You see, not only does the power of inertia state that an object will remain in its current state of motion, it also states that only a greater force can cause the object to change.

Last summer I was hit by a greater force. I graduated from MPA school with no prospects for employment. I was given the chance to change my life and break away from the power of inertia. I was living with the GF in a stable environment that could have been a breeding ground for creativity, self-discovery and entrepreneurship. Mostly it wasn’t. I wasted my tine trying to get back to where I was most comfortable. Working for someone else.  I dabbled in starting my own business, but I don’t think I took it as seriously as I should have. I didn’t push as hard as I should have.  Now I find myself, basically in the same place that I was in before I went to graduate school, except now it’s worse.

When I look at some of my peers, I see them as these brilliant rockets blasting off into the outer spaces of life and success and I wonder what drives them so.  This reminds me of a quote I heard during one of my Philosophers’ Notes that says that

“the majority of fuel used by a rocket is  used during take-off when the rocket is trying to breech the Earth’s gravitational pull.”

Hmmm.

Physics (Gravity and Inertia) shows us that the hardest part is getting started. Maybe, if I can just start moving and build some momentum, I can shift my inertia from one of standing still to one of constant movement. Maybe it only takes a push to propel myself (figuratively) into the air. Maybe then getting to and staying at cruising altitude will be relatively easy.

Over the years, I’ve don’t a pretty good job of being cognizant of the language that I use when I refer to my relationship with money.  And over the years, money and I have developed a pretty decent relationship. While I’ve had an occasional slip up where I’ve run out of money before I’ve run out of month, I correct myself quickly.

That is, until now. For whatever reason, money and I are not on good terms. I get paid and it seems like days later, I’m poor again. I know that this is partly because I spend all my saving in San Francisco, and partly because I was unemployed for almost three months, but those aren’t the only reasons.

The real reasons are that it’s been a long time since I’ve had a real paycheck, and I suck at keeping a budget and I have high class taste and a pauper budget. Sad but totally true.

In graduate school, at the beginning of each semester you get a HUGE check and are tasked with budgeting in a way to make it last the entire semester.  This I could do.  And I always had a least a part-time job which allowed me to buy more beer. Life was awesome.

Before graduate school I lived with my mother.  For most of the time I had a well-paid full time job and a part-time job I did for fun (or for tequila money).    I bought groceries for the house and did most of the cooking in lieu of rent, and I had few expenses.  I even managed to save a bit. Life was awesome.

Before that, I shared a really cheap apartment with one of my former classmates, worked at an extremely low-paying job and hated my life. My only indulgence was my kickboxing membership because after working with 21 screaming first graders every day I needed to hit something every day. I often had to ask my mom to bail me out. That winter I had the flu and missed a week (unpaid) from school. It was a TOUGH year.

So full circle, I’m completely responsible for feeding, clothing, and providing shelter for myself.  Even though I’m splitting the household bills with the GF, taking care of myself is not an easy task. In fact, I f-ing suck at it.

I’m frustrated because I know that I’m making more money now than I’ve ever made in my life but it doesn’t feel like it.  And I’m frustrated because I thought I would be making a LOT more money after graduate school. (Screw the Recession!!)

In August when I got my first paycheck, my instinct was to pay all the bills that were past due over the summer. Bad idea. Basically because I forgot that I needed to pay the rent. D’Oh!  By the second paycheck, I was reeling. How in the world am I supposed to live off this?

So I decided to create a budget.

September was better. I managed not to get any overdraft fees on my checking accounts and I’m under my limits on my credit cards, which is awesome. However, sometimes I look at my budget or my bank accounts and it still says that I have like 2 dollars in the bank. This makes me frustrated and sad. Sometimes I just open up my pretty little excel spreadsheet and stare. Where does all my money go? What expenses can I delete? Do I really need Groceries? Gas? My storage unit?

I don’t want to get a second job at this point in my life. In the past I worked two jobs to stay busy. Now I want to spend my evenings working out, writing, or hanging with the GF, not bussing tables and filling water glasses.

To live the kind of life I want to live, I’m going to need to be resourceful about my revenue streams. And I’m going to have to give something(s) up. Again, balance is important. I need to be responsible with my finances, on the off chance that someone down the line cares about that sort of thing. On the other hand, I want to enjoy my life and my money. I refuse to be a slave to my debt.

So what to do? I probably won’t be able to pay off my credit cards or car loan as quickly as I want. I’m probably going to have to give myself a higher deductible on my car insurance. I may need a forbearance or deferment on my student loans. I’m going to have to store all my junk at home rather than rent a storage unit, and I’m going to have to be a more frugal grocery shopper.

Bottom line, I’m not going to let money rule my life.  We just gotta get back on good speaking terms.

How do you manage your monthly finances?

I mean, I sweated a lot, but I didn’t die like I thought I would.

When I was in college I found a cheap gym that taught ju jit su and muy tai kickboxing. I’ve always been fascinated by martial arts, so I decided to give them a shot. It was love from the beginning.  At the beginning of each lesson, we ran through a series of drills to practice basic moves. Then we would move into learning something new. The majority of each lesson was spent “sparring”.  The whole class would pair up and go at it. (I’ve fought hundred pound ladies, three hundred pound men, and ultimate fighting contestants). I learned quickly that the longer I trained the better I’d be. I’m sure you are thinking, duh, of course training improves skills, but what I mean is, training and improving in martial arts skills has a lot to do with muscle memory.  If I thought about what move to do next, I often would find myself pinned.  But if I let my body take over and do what it remembered from the lessons, I was much more likely to win a match.

I trained in ju jit su and kickboxing for a year, then I moved away and I couldn’t find another cheap gym to train in. I looked into other gyms and even went to a couple of “free” classes. A year or two later, my body still remembered how to protect itself.

And I don’t even have to remind you of my swimming adventure! At first, I thought I would die every time I got into the water.  Over the course of just a few months, I learned to swim on my back and my stomach. Now, in Atlanta, with no money and no pool, I miss the water.  I can’t wait till I get settled in, join a Y and get back to swimming.

Oh, and by the way, when I set a goal for my body, I ALWAYS lose weight. But I don’t even care because when I get into an activity it quickly stops being about losing weight and starts being about having fun and learning a new talent.

This has been a tremendously stressful year with writing the capstone, graduating from school, and looking for my next step.  Every time I’ve gotten bogged down or discouraged about finishing my thesis or this stupid job search the GF sends me a text message reminding me that I ran a 5k (I was training when we met), that I learned to swim (swimming is a goal of her’s too)… and reminds me I should tap into that that same tenacity and control and endurance and persistence to overcome whatever other obstacles (not having a job or having an insane thesis committee or starting a business).

It’s hard, but I’m starting to get the picture. She’s right. If I can control my body enough to do the athletic stuff I’ve done with it, and have the persistence and endurance to keep training even when it hurts or is inconvenient and meet my physical goals (with sweat, no blood or tears) then I should at least display the same persistence and endurance, and most of all, patience when “running after” my professional and personal goals.

I’m bored because I’m tired of living my life the way I’m currently living it.  Apply for Job. Wait for a response. Check my twitter and Google Reader. Repeat.

By the way, this is the last whiny post about how tired I am of being jobless and poor.  I’ll probably still write about the job search, but I promise not be so f-ing whiny. I’M tired of listening to me whine. I’ve got to gain perspective in my life. I need to redefine my goals. I need to seriously think about my life’s direction. I have to get myself together.

I always get excited when I stumble upon a really great person who seems to have taken live by the balls and SQUEEZED. I want to squeeze life by the balls.  I want to use my superpower, dammit.

I wanna DO something.

And then I think about all the things I could and, dammit, SHOULD be doing to fully start working for myself and then I come up with 5 billion reasons why I can’t do all the things I should be doing. And it’s stupid because I’ve done stuff that is way harder…. WTF is my problem?

Hence the “getting myself together” that I spoke of a few sentences ago.

Question 1. Why is it is so hard to move from “starting” to “doing”?

Maybe it’s time for an online to-do list, with you guys (yes, that means you) to keep me accountable, huh?

***

Everyone morning I look at my very beautiful Vision Board and I sigh. It makes me sad to even look at it.

Why? Because I remember the idealistic Monica that carefully and lovingly put the Vision Board together this Spring. (it’s so gosh darn PRETTY!!) And I remember the hot and sweaty Monica, who, this summer, after packing her car to move to Atlanta, scrambled to find a place for said vision board. (I didn’t want to wrinkle or, God forbid, tear any of it)

Now the vision board, my clothes, computer, and 20 books that I couldn’t live without are setting in Atlanta.  I’ve found a prominent place to display it where I can see it often through the day. But all I feel when I look at it is sadness. Not happiness, not joy, not hope, not even pride that I put together something so lovely. I feel sad. And Duped.

I was in a very hopeful state of mind when I put together my vision board. I thought about everything I wanted. (Yes, the words FABULOUS and FAMOUS can be found on my board.  Along with HEALTHY and SAFE and SUCCESSFUL, and my core values) I imagined my dream life ( not so farfetched that it’s unattainable) and I tacked it on my board. I put everything on it. The cities I want to live (no, Atlanta is not on it), the jobs I’ve really want it (and subsequently been rejected for), my business (that I’ve procrastinated starting) and my desire to rule to free world (what? I’ve been planning that one for YEARS)

Every day I look at my vision board with a heavy heart and I want to kick it and hit it and break it into a million little corkboard pieces. The GF says that I should calm down. I’ve only been here for a week, she says. It’s not my fault that all the jobs I’ve interviewed for don’t want to hire anyone until August, she says. Something good will happen, she says. Have a drink, she says.

We disagree on the point of the vison board. She says that the purpose of the vision board is to keep me focused on my goals.  I thought the vision board was to help me manifest my future. Which it ain’t doing.

Question 2. Who is right? Me or the GF?

Question 3. Why is it that everyone else can be optimistic about my future except me?

I had a conversation with my mother today.  She asked me how I was doing.  My new stock answer: Still poor and jobless.

I swear if she’d been in the room with me, she would have smacked me in the head and told me to snap out of it.

Instead, in her best “everything will be ok” voice, she proceeds to tell me that everything will work out. She reiterated the GF, that I’ve only been here for a week, that I’m smart and capable, that God wouldn’t put anything on me that I couldn’t handle.

Then she goes into her “you listen here, missy” voice and tells me that I am not to start doubting, I have to believe in myself. I can’t even use adverbs: maybe, probably, and hopefully can no longer be a part of my vocabulary. Over and over, using different words, she says

Something good is going to happen. I just know it.

I’m trying to believe mama, I’m trying.

During the hours when I am, what passes for awake, I trudge from restaurant to restaurant from temp agency to temp agency putting on my happy face, and telling them all why I would be just AWESOME as a hostess, bartender, server, administrative assistant, call center rep……and all I REALLY want to do is cry.

This is not my life.  At least, this is not the life I wanted/dreamed of/expected.  I mean, when I finish writing this post, I’m going down to the local CVS to apply for a job as a cashier.

And to think. I actually WENT to college. TWICE.

At night when I’m waiting (usually in vain) for my eyes to close and sleep to overtake me, I run through my mind all the people I need to email, all the staffing companies I still need to get to, all the cute little restaurants that I should drop by, and ask the Universe, God, whatever you want to call the higher being that keeps the world turning…… When will it end? When will I hit rock bottom?

I am beginning to believe that it is only when I am on the brink of a nervous breakdown, all my optimism is gone, and I have no other options that whatever breakthrough I’m supposed to have will happen.  I’ll have a moment of clarity, and the path I’m supposed to take will be clear, and I’l stop feeling like a fish out of water.

And I think it’s close.

Monica, you’re awesome and successful. 

Every time someone tells me that I’m going to be fine and I should stop worrying about not finding a job, part of me doesn’t believe them (even thought I really want to believe them). I’ve worked crazy hard over the past year. I’ve been networking my ass, applying for lots and lots of jobs, going on informational interviews, going to professional conferences, tweaking my resume, building a new website all working towards getting a fucking job. 

Unfortunately, I’m one among 100’s (I know, I harass HR managers) of new graduates, and older experienced displaced workers going after the same very limited job pool.  So my goal has changed, and I’m piecing together a couple of entrepreneurial ventures with my friends and classmates.  And I’m really excited about them.  But I’m rather scared shitless. 

When I tell folks about the consulting and the promotions and the party planning, they tend to get really excited. And the more excited they get the more scared I get. 

What if I fuck it up?  What if I’m not as awesome as everyone thinks I am? 

Tonight I finally asked the GF why she keeps telling me that I’m going to be fine.  She said the proof is in the pudding. Over and over, she said, she’s seen me make something out of nothing.  She’s seen me hustle.  

She said, 

I would trust you to make a great cake because I’ve seen you make cakes and I’ve tasted your cake in the past so I don’t worry about your capacity to make good cake in the future. 

I make good cake, huh? 

I giggled at her metaphors (all food related, since we’re dieting), but I think she’s on the money. 

I am a diva (which is the female version of a hustler).  I’m seriously not going to be left penniless, homeless and hungry. I have always had a plan.  And I bought a domain name just in case. I go through my school notes, and they are filled with business plans, and funding sources, and potential partners. And I built a beautiful vision board with all my goals on it, and you can’t go wrong with a vision board.  I’m thinking about tumblring my vision board so you guys can see. It’s SO awesome, and I love it. 

I’m still scared shitless, but I’m not letting my fear stop me from moving forward.  In fact, I think my fear propels me forward.  

When my mama says she’s praying and my bosses tell me I’m great, and I interview with managers who tell me that they wish they had the money to hire me (but they don’t and they can’t), and the GF tells me that she’s not riding my anxiety train…… 

I’m going to take a deep breath.  I’m going to smile.  I’m going to nod and agree with them.  Then I’m going to double time it with my business ventures so that I don’t let all these wonderful people down. 

How do you deal with fear and insecurity?

Tonight, a group of us got together and had Indian food. 

Not just normal Indian food.  One of us found this Indian lady who cooks every Wednesday at her house.  She doesn’t just cook; this woman stick’s her little Indian foot in it!  With an RSVP you can come to her house, eat in or take out dinner for $10 a person. 

We went in with tuberware, got a crazy amount of food, left and ate dinner (family-style) by the pool at our apartment complex. 

It was SO much fun. And the food was A-MAZING.

We ate, and talked about each other, our classmates, our professors.  As I am not a fan of small talk, I love intimate conversations about hopes, fears, concerns, life…. And tonight was that kind of conversation. 

 I love that every time I talk to my classmate friends I reveal parts of myself and learn new things about them.  I love our closeness, I love our easiness, I love our generosity with each other.  Even though we will be scattered across the country in a few weeks, and I will be soooooo far away from these crazies that I have come to love and admire, I KNOW that these are my life friends.  While our relationships will change with our geography, I have to beleive that we can remain a part of each other’s lives.  (otherwise I’ll go stark raving mad)

I love my ‘maties!