One would think my skill in recognizing the rabbit hole of angst and shame would be razor-sharp by now, but I still didn’t make the connection between my sudden and surprising loss of compassion and the battle flag running up the pole. A talented female friend posted a link in a closed network, asking for support from the members for one her projects. The first sentence of her message was an apology. It was no less than the fifth self-promotion apology I’ve seen from a female friend in the last seven days.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, really?! Why do we apologize for requesting support and attention in our professional/creative/athletic endeavors?

I should be posting my links and asking for referrals, but I don’t, because I don’t want to look like a stuck-up bitch, but I also refuse to apologize, and fuck if I know how to construct a marketing message that strikes that delicate balance.

Somehow I still managed to be surprised when I woke up this morning and served myself a steaming mug of doubt, failure, and shame. Purchasing new batteries for my mouse without outside financing is a major, orchestrated event right now, and my financial worth is facing a sharp decrease before I can even fathom another upswing in income.

Much of that is no one’s fault. The economy is improving at an excruciatingly slow pace. Start-ups, solopreneurs, service providers and small businesses- my market- are struggling to pay their own rent. They don’t have a need for the recurring accounting work that I anticipated would sustain me while I developed my client base; there’s no money to count, much less to pay for the counting.

Much of it is my own fault. I’m an accountant, I’m a writer, I’m a business owner. Things I am not: extroverted, a salesperson, a marketer, a business development manager. The learning curve, the dues-paying, the crippling lack of familiarity or comfort- it paralyzes me. I know who I am, and I know I’m skilled and talented in both of my fields, but you probably don’t, and that’s my fault.

It’s your fault, too.

When I declared my freedom from the whims of old, fat, balding white men that can no longer tell you what a gallon of milk costs or remember the sickening nausea of floating a check before payday, you cheered me on, and I was grateful and emboldened.

Where are you now?

I live in an entrepreneurial community, which as far as I can tell, means that financially secure baby boomers and aimless trustafarians spout platitudes and retweet each other endlessly. There are no referrals, there is no real encouragement or collaboration, there are cliques and cliches and pet projects. My local encouragement and support, ironically, comes from those who’ve relegated themselves to salaries and cubicials, not from the business leaders of Asheville. Most of those leaders aren’t interested in mentoring me because there’s no immediate payoff for them, like the real estate mogel who informed me that he does business with people who use his services first. He owns several properties and a business services firm. I own an iPad and a ten-key.

If you’ve ever inquired, “why don’t you have a publisher? why don’t you get paid to write?”, the answer is simple. You haven’t liked this page on Facebook, you don’t retweet my posts, you don’t comment here and share these words with your networks. A few of you fall over yourselves praising my talent, but can’t be bothered to answer questions via email to help me understand what’s marketable about my writing. Oh, except for the guy who answered immediately to shame me for not wanting to sell a book about my failed marriage or stormy childhood. Maybe some of you prefer me small and cold, I guess.

Perhaps you know me on a deeper, more intimate level, and you’ve helped to the point of resentment. Maybe you know that your approval matters to me, and you’ve wielded that sacred trust to talk to me about looking for work, or getting a job, or you’ve referred to my very real corporation as a hobby, or little project. Bonus points if you’ve availed yourself of my extra time when business is slow. Since you’re available….

Those are solidly half of the reasons why women apologize for self-promoting, and why I’ve cried all damn day.

I’m working on the other half.

Are you okay? I know this was a hard day for you, do you want to talk a little? I’d like to know how you’re doing.

We had just executed a mass-layoff in my office, including most of my staff, and my knowledge of this impending doom preceded theirs by a little over a month. I had cried at the prep meeting, while terminating my Payables clerk, and with some coworkers after they were handed their pink slips. I cried all damn day, and only worried a little about my professional reputation.

I’m okay. I meant what I said earlier- this is the right thing for the business, it’s the right thing for those of us who remain- but that doesn’t make it any easier. I know that I’ve been able to look back on my darkest days six weeks, six months, six years down the road and I’ve had the solace of realizing that if I hadn’t faced that hardship, I wouldn’t be right here, and that’s always been a source of comfort to me. To be able to say of the hardest things that they helped make the best things in my life. I’m sad tonight for the people we let go, but more than anything, I just hope that they can look back later on and see that this ending was the beginning of something better.

A relieved smile spread from his eyes to his cheeks, and we chatted for a few minutes before someone cut in and I excused myself.

A few days shy of my thirty-second birthday, I still believe that. I can’t defend it, I can barely explain it, the best hope I have is to point to nature and say it is evidence to me of a higher order that we have not yet grasped in our knowledge of the universe.

If faith is an innate knowing, then this is mine, and I understand it in my bones.

I don’t know why bad things happen to good people, and I don’t know why some lives end so early or so unexpectedly. I understand that people hurt people because they hurt, but I don’t understand the cosmic value in so much pain. Perhaps there isn’t any at all, and I only seek to ascribe it some value to make peace with it somehow.

Since my earliest years of awareness, I’ve been called an old soul. Certainly, I’ve had a few encounters with strangers that were more recognition than introduction, and have always read between the lines without really realizing it. What that means is beyond any of us to understand, and I won’t do it the injustice of pinning it down. Those kinds of things are still magical to those of us that want to see them, and I suppose my biggest question for my coincidence and science friends is, simply:

Why wouldn’t you want to think that things happen for a reason, even if we don’t understand how or why?

I’m incredibly suspicious of anyone who doesn’t believe in something, one thing, anything that they can’t see.

Last night, I sat in the kitchen nook. The steam from my soup kissed my cheeks, and the faint smell of woodsmoke sat in the back of my throat. My thoughts drifted to my upcoming birthday and the annual reconciling of reality against my visions and dreams.

As always, my life looks nothing like what I ever imagined for myself. The people and experiences that filled the gap between my dreams and my defeats are both precious and priceless in their own right, and I choose to believe that they put me right here, right now, with this particular perspective. Any variation on my history would not have produced this moment, with these people, and my capacity to appreciate them.

You can argue with that all you want to, and I would relish the discussion.

What you can’t argue with is the sense of recognition and belonging that strikes deep and true, past my neurotic brain and my poor schizophrenic heart, straight into the marrow. It produces a warm calmness that whispers above all the noise of doubt and fear.

You belong here.

I started this blog four and a quarter years ago; happily married, running the accounting department of a locally owned small business, attending college classes, and doing a little freelance bookkeeping. We’d been in the house almost a year. Somewhere in there, I started seeing a therapist for my bee phobia, at the wasbund’s request. My sister and I had just started to develop a friendship. The four of us took vacations together, visited each other regularly, gathered for holidays. Adicus was a little shy of his first birthday, and already a magnificent specimen. Nearly all of the ingredients for the life I’ve always dreamed of were at my disposal, and my struggle at the time was figuring out how to put them together and bake a cake. Those early posts center on my conflicts with gender roles, feminism, and modern marriage.

My heart broke wide open for this girl who had absolutely no clue what lay ahead. Her heart broke for me; she thought she was on the verge of becoming a mother. We wept together and were soothed by dreams that found breath and life in the years between us: starting a business, cherishing sisterhood, keeping the house, writing here faithfully. I love her for her innocence; she cherishes the wisdom I’ve found in the wake of so much loss and change.

The irony is a thick lump in my throat. I ponder whether a marriage can survive a reversal of traditional gender roles after I declare a clear preference for them, and then proceed to document the unraveling of my marriage under a reversal of traditional gender roles.

I’m so fucking good I foreshadow without even meaning to.

I’ll make no pretense of objectivity here- I’m not sure that I’m capable of that. The more success and fulfillment I found in the external world, the more success and fulfillment he lost there. The happier and more confident I became, the more miserable he became. Whether that was the force of circumstance or a symptom of unhealthy attachment is a knot that will probably never come loose.

The failure of our marriage only means that we were not capable of navigating the changes of our life together. It is not a testament to whether either of us are capable of it with someone else, or its possibility in general. I’m not proud of the way I treated him in those hardest moments, nor am I proud of the way I allowed myself to be treated. We let resentment, self-justification and contempt infiltrate our bond, and it died a slow and horrible death.

Being a single woman denies me the luxury of dividing labor and responsibility. My sister and I share my home and the joy and burden of keeping house. Admittedly, her masculine energy is stronger than mine and she attends to most of the typically masculine chores. One of her greatest gifts to me is her acceptance of my lack of interest and fortitude in tools and things with motors. I’m more than satisfied with the small victories to that end: building some of the shelving for my bedroom closet, running the wood burner, painting the living room.

A combination of time, experience and making peace with my mother has loosened my view on gender roles. I’m much more comfortable with myself as a person and a woman than I was then. It took not being a wife to realize that my strong feminine energy is an expression of my personality, not a function of role or status. I will never be the kind of woman that could leave her child with anyone else to work sixty hours a week in a traditional office. I still think it’s hilarious that anyone would doubt my ability to be happy and fulfilled as a full time mother and housewife, though I am much more aware of just what a personal risk it is.

Making such a definitive decision either way no longer seems likely or necessary; the gray area is much more spacious than it once appeared. I do still plan on finishing my degree, and I would also love to bring a child into the world, but I am no longer so concerned with how those two goals will fit together. I’m much more confident in my capability to balance them, and the right man will support me in my efforts.

Division of labor is of little significance compared to the dynamic of a relationship. How often is a division of labor argument really about the balance of power? More often than not, I suspect. Trust, respect, communication and commitment are much more important than who pays the bills and who mows the lawn.

My father has always said that I am looking for someone to walk beside me, not in front of or behind me. I would agree, with the caveat that they do most of the navigating, know when I need a direct order and/or a stiff drink, and are willing to take me to the airport at an ungodly hour. One last catch: he should do these things with the same loving gratitude I feel when I am cooking his dinner or balancing his checkbook.

Choose to be better, not bitter. Leave the losses, failures and mistakes of the past behind; you aren’t the girl who suffered those heartaches. You’re the girl that learned from them and triumphed. Keep that without clinging to the haunting details of your pain.

Realize that looking too far down the road is just a sneaky way of looking over your shoulder. Live by your beliefs and values in the present and take heart- this is all you can and should do for tomorrow.

Honor your intuition. It isn’t paranoia, though it might feel that way when you obsess and over-think things. Let your feelings prompt the question instead of trying to answer it on your own.

Value your creative life as much as you value your business life, in recognition that they both provide sustenance necessary for your survival.  Money spent for travel has the highest return on investment of any discretionary purchase, high enough to warrant liberation from the discretionary column.

Stop continuing the work of people who want you to feel small and undeserving to serve their own needs and fears. No, seriously, stop. Because you know damn well they try to trick you into playing small and low out of sheer terror for who you might become. You’re a force of nature. Memorize the affection and appreciation in peoples’ faces when they’ve said this to you, and own it, already.

Understand that punishing yourself for receiving is the exact opposite of humility; guilt holds no more virtue than entitlement.

Keep a balance between your need for solitude and your tendency to hide behind it. Go out into the world before the walls start to close in on you at home.

Absolve yourself for failing to forgive those who’ve betrayed you. Accept as your penance: not begrudging them the compassion of others.

Remember that all love is a gift, and that any time you are working to earn it instead of honor it, something is very, very wrong.

When a man asks you to see only him, take the opportunity to share your expectations. Explain what commitment means to you, because most people do not comprehend it on the same level. Do not allow yourself to be put on the shelf one. more. time. by someone who isn’t capable of sticking around. Let the challenge of winning you over become the first they face in the relationship, so you can make an educated decision.

Just so we’re clear: if they are anything else than willing, capable and utterly devoted, your decision should be to get back out on the dance floor and enjoy yourself. You’ve lived on crumbs for far too long. You know in your heart you’re happier on your own than with someone who settles for a pale rendition of partnership.

Wear high heels and avoid men who are uncomfortable with a level gaze. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and irritation.

Stop excluding your own body from the awe and regard you have for the rest of nature, and always tend to it with at least the loving care you show your pets and plants. Sleep when you’re tired. Eat. Play. Be strong and healthy. See yourself through the eyes of others when the mirror is too unkind. Throw the fucking scale out. Throw. it. out. Do your pants fit? There you go, no scale necessary. If you really want a number to obsess over, test your blood sugar. Yeah, I thought so.

Make more time for your people. They miss you. So you hate the phone. Text. Write. Visit. Send cookies. Do whatever makes you happy, so long as it demonstrates how much they mean to you. Do this often and at regular intervals.

There are two things in this world that provide both security and freedom. One is love, the other is money. Be a good steward of both and you’ll find contentment.

Resist the lure of cattiness and drama. Time and energy are too precious to waste on anyone that provokes it.

You’re an entrepreneur now, and that means that the work/life balance is a murky shade of gray. This a huge change from corporate life. It’s also the very reason that you want so very much to succeed at this. Work is life, and life is work. The right work does more than earn a living. It makes a life. The marriage of these two functions is the summit of self-actualization. A touch of altitude sickness is perfectly normal, but don’t let it overtake you. Just breathe, be present, and keep climbing.

It wouldn’t hurt you to ask for help once in awhile. I’m just saying. It only means that you are sweet and smart enough to surround yourself with people who shore up your weaknesses. Just like using Google Maps on your phone, it keeps you from heading in the wrong direction needlessly.

Every so often, someone questions me on this point. The most notable being my own therapist, and the most recent being one of my closest friends. I used to wonder why people who never knew I ever aspired to be a therapist would ask me why I didn’t take that path, what made people see me in that role without my prompting.

The best explanation came to me from an intimate colleague at the borg, a human resources manager. The amazing woman that took over all of the  duties I resented so intensely under the regime of a small business owner.

You’re a sin-eater.

The best therapists are merely mirrors; gently and lovingly revealing an objective reflection, unburdened by your own perception of yourself. It is offered up under a new light through careful and compassionate analysis for your own consideration. There’s an exchange of energy; the limbic connection that inevitably forms between people who engage in constant, rich and meaningful contact. New pathways are literally formed in a sea of neurons, which allows us to process and react to stimulus in a new and more healthy manner.

One of the better kept secrets in the mental health industry is the toll this exchange takes on practitioners. They become overwhelmed, depressed and disturbed for the very simple reason that mirroring tortured souls means reflecting healing energy towards them and receiving their negative energy. There are methods for properly processing the weight and lack of mutuality of therapeutic mirroring, but I have no desire to take on an occupation that requires a psychic shield. Particularly since I am sensitive to that energy and susceptible to the darkness myself.

Though I have avoided the ugly trap of making my living by eating the misery of others, I cannot always avoid the side effects of being a sin-eater in my personal life.

People become enamored of their reflection in my mirror. They find relief and perspective in the reflection I show them, and they attach that experience of relief to me personally. The crutch of narcissism overcomes them, and mesmerized by their own reflection, they become irrationally demanding of my time and attention. To add insult to irritation, they are motivated primarily by their hunger to have me hold up the mirror, and secondarily if at all by me as a person. I’ve learned that when someone is threatened by my own personal feelings, it’s the mirror they want, not the girl behind it. It isn’t their fault; they have a need, and they find a way to get it met, and that’s what humans do- anything and everything they can to get their needs met.

The problem lies in the space between what is appropriate in a mutually beneficial relationship and what they need.

I’ve become extremely protective of who I form emotionally intimate relationships with, because I’ve had a few that almost killed me. I held that mirror up until I had nothing left for even myself, and slowly died inside behind it. There was a time when I rather liked hiding behind the reflections of other people, because it allowed me to form attachments without subjecting myself to my own reflection.

Now I restrict that very inner ring of my social circle to people who certainly recognize and appreciate the mirror, but are motivated by their love and appreciation of the girl behind it. They are healthy and stable enough to self comfort, and they enter our interactions with energy that feeds as well as consumes. Not only are they willing and capable of mutual mirroring, but their expectations of what I can and should provide them are respectful and reasonable. They don’t approach me with hunger; they only want what is given freely and they only give with an open heart and without expectation.  This is what I strive to provide the people I love the most, and I have learned by now that I am not willing or capable of expecting less from them. This entire exercise of carefully choosing who I allow myself to bond with isn’t some kind of defense mechanism or dating strategy. It’s very simply a matter of life and death.

Sometimes it wrenches my heart to leave a raw and gaping inappropriate need unfulfilled; I have a great deal of empathy for the black holes that ache in the hearts of others. Other times, my anger gets the better of me. I’ve done a great deal of hard work to dull the ache and close in the edges of my own black holes; how dare anyone attempt to use my affection and attention to avoid their own hard work?! My outward response is always the same, in honor of my own self-preservation- denial and withdrawal.

It was pointed out to me recently that honest writing is quite possibly the most intimate act one can commit, because it isn’t mirrored. Which made me wonder if my drive to write is not motivated by a need to force myself to my own reflection. There’s a self-awareness in the process that undeniably has a therapeutic effect; laying my perspective on the page requires me to examine it closely and in meaningful way. I think this is why people react so intensely sometimes to what I post here; they see a part of their own reflection they were hiding from. By forcing myself to the mirror, I’ve tricked them into seeing those hidden pieces of themselves.

So I think it’s only wise that the inner chambers of my life and heart be reserved for those who are capable of stepping through the looking glass.

if it’s a mirror you want, just look into my eyes
or a whipping boy, someone to despise
or a prisoner in the dark
tied up in chains you just can’t see
or a beast in a gilded cage
that’s all some people ever want to be

you can’t control an independent heart…

-sting “if you love somebody set them free”

I had a few years of accounting experience and a wealth of knowledge, thanks to my mentor in Atlanta. My education consisted of a GED obtained six months after I should have graduated high school. I am a high school dropout.

These men, these business owners, lifted me up and gave me a chance at a bright and beautiful future. They paid for my business classes, and the salary increase from the promotion allowed the wasbund and I to purchase our first home. The day of the closing, they pretended they were going to fire me. Instead, the entire company- fifty employees- presented me with a Lowe’s card for a generous sum. Half of the money came out of my fellow colleagues’ wallets. The other half was matched by the business.

Over the next four years, I met and came to love the people I call my closest friends. We were that business. We loved and hated, learned and grew, and strengthened the bonds of our friendship- all under the leaking roof of a former Food Lion. There may have been cousins or Uncles you’d rather not sit next to at Thanksgiving, but that all fell away when someone needed the support of the group. We were a family.

On January 8th, 2008, our little local manufacturing company was purchased by a privately-owned corporate conglomerate- the same company that bought our biggest competitor six months earlier. And so the Borg descended upon us and swallowed us up.

But the Borg is the Borg, and the people- they are not the Borg.

Those executives in their suits took us under their wings. The transition manager, the director of internal audit, the corporate director of human resources- these people came in and got to know me. They mentored me, they looked out for me, they made me a better person and a better businesswoman for having known them. All of these people have laughed and cried with me, listened with care to my biggest dreams and worst fears, and shared a personal part of themselves with me, let me take a peek behind the professional mask and made a place for me in their hearts. They are the influence behind the spoils of what was my corporate life- the laptop, the office, the business trips, the expense account. This company gave me incredible health benefits, a double digit percentage raise, and free tuition. Books and required supplies. Every last dime.

Six months later, they merged us with our biggest competitor and created one division under one brand. As the bottom fell out of the economy and more importantly, our core markets. The other company’s controller was made controller of the entire division, and I kept my management title but was forced to lay off everyone but B.

Even though we were sworn enemies by trade, I came to know and love people from the Scottsdale office. Those women made damn sure that I never felt alone when I was there on business, and I found with many of them a profound connection that I hope will endure these sweeping changes.

We had a mandatory conference call this morning. Consolidation. Downsizing. Individual meetings. I was working from home when I got the secret squirrel phone call that senior management and human resources had shown up unexpectedly. I hurried into some pants and drove in.

That business owner turned corporate employee- the very man that lifted me up six years ago- took me into a corner office and gave me my papers. About a year ago, when it was painfully apparent that the division was not sustainable as it was running, I had asked him to be the one to tell me when my time came. It wasn’t arranged that way at first, but because he takes care of me, has taken care of me for some time now, he made the switch and did it himself.

He set me free- a wish I openly expressed to all of these people that are privy to the closed door and off-site meetings where such things are discussed. I’m just not a corporate drone. It became soulless and lifeless, and I was suffocating. They took good care of me.

I have a plan. A business plan. I also have my family, my friends and my community- all who have expressed their support in the past twelve hours. For that, I am eternally grateful.

To my coworkers- the original members of our magical little company, those of you who helped assimilate us into the Borg, and my colleagues and friends from our original competitor:

It was an honor and a pleasure, and I’m a better person for having known you.

All of you.

Her criticism of my work was rather harsh.

The weaknesses she pointed out are valid; they are the same criticisms leveled by my fellow writers. The intensity, however, left both author and muse with the sting of boxed ears.

Receiving criticism is difficult for me. Beyond the merciless wounding of my fragile pride, it starts the long and difficult task of examination. It is not a pretty or easy process- the attempt to lay that pride aside and decide whether the criticism is valid, what the critic’s motives might be, what their perspective is, and what my reaction to it means.

In the words of Kenny Rogers:

“Every gambler knows that the secret to surviving/is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep…”

My father can find fault in anything and anyone. He could tell Picasso or Beethoven where to make improvements. The silver lining of growing up under such scrutiny is that I’m fairly well practiced at throwing away what I believe to be invalid criticism. In order to do that, though, I have to understand why I’m throwing it away, lest I toss aside valuable insight out of a deep-seated reaction to being held under the light of inspection.

I respect and admire my creative writing professor, my Hungarian mother. She is the type of woman I would love to be in twenty years.

Her declaration as a maternal figure has an unintended effect on this particular student, though. To most of her “babies”, that maternal relationship is nurturing, soothing, unconditional. She is not aware that my perception of the maternal connection adds to those things a sense of fierce competition. My mother started the never-ending contest for validity, for the attention of others, for success and righteousness before I could speak. Every word the woman breathes in my direction must be heavily filtered by her insatiable desire to best me anywhere and everywhere possible.  I regard all maternal figures with suspicion; my mother’s maternal behavior in most situations was a tool for condescending, a weapon that elevated her status above mine regardless of virtue or correctness.

That my professor would even dare suggest that I am capable of leaving this space unattended until the class ends in January colors her criticism with a lack of understanding and insight. I am quite possibly on the precipice of some incredible opportunities created by this work- the work she handed back to me with vague but certain damnation. I will also admit that her attempt to be an authority figure only adds to my general suspicion, and quite frankly, makes me yearn to seek out her work and return it fully edited in dark red permanent marker.

So, I have decided what to throw away and what to keep: I will put my best attempt into her prompts, I will carry her criticism of the work in my mind when I write anything more significant than a grocery list.

I cannot and will not stop writing here.

I just can’t believe that setting aside my own story better qualifies me to tell any other.

The Parkway is one of my favorite places in the world. So simple, so beautiful- in a world of double-tandem semi-trucks and seventy miles per hour speed limits, the Parkway is a haven, a refuge. My parents don’t call me their “little ridge-runner” for no reason.

I regretted my route once; when I found myself behind a car with Iowa plates on a steep decent with more than a few descending decreasing radius curves- a fancy engineering term for a bitch of a curve. A descending radius curve is where the road changes elevation in the curve- you’re not just turning, you’re also going downhill. A decreasing radius curve is where the turn gets harder as you go through it.  So, of course, a declining decreasing radius curve is one that combines a drop in elevation with a tightening of the curve once you’re in it.

What makes these curves so treacherous? The grade of the decent causes your car to accelerate, which makes you want to hit your brakes to slow back down, but that makes it almost impossible to steer into the apex of the curve. You pick up speed when it is the last thing you need.

After you’ve driven in the mountains for awhile, you get the hang of these nasty little curves. You learn to start into them slower than you would a level turn. The car sets itself a line as you start the curve and pick up speed, and your job is to interfere as little as possible with that natural line, steering only as much as necessary, and only braking very lightly just before the apex if absolutely necessary.

People from Iowa are perhaps not familiar with this technique. So they fight the line. They ride their brakes or hit their brakes hard in the apex, which makes steering much harder. I feel for them- they’re scared, they’re getting a lesson in vehicle physics that isn’t had in Iowa, they are white-knuckled and full of fear. (Not to mention that they’re melting their brake pads and running the risk of losing braking power altogether). It’s frustrating and irritating for me to ride behind them; they ruin my line when they fight their own, but I’m irritated while they are scared for their lives.

I wish I could tell them not to fight the line. To slow down a little more coming in, if they’re nervous, but once the curve starts, take your foot off the pedals and just steer. Fighting the line is actually more dangerous.

I’ve been stressed, scared, frustrated, angry and unsure of myself. The life I dream of is on the horizon, and the life I once cherished is ending slowly but surely, like the passing of mileposts. I cannot see what the road looks like from where I’m at to where I’m surely headed, and that element of uncertainty is what makes me crazy. I drive myself crazy trying to plan and plot and scheme and prepare for every possible outcome or pitfall or obstacle, drafting plans A through ZZ in a attempt to find some security in life-changing situations that are well beyond my control.

I’ve been fighting the line. I’ve been braking and freaking out and over-steering like a flatlander. I’m making things much, much harder than they have to be, and more dangerous too, in the sense that my health and emotional stability have suffered, are suffering, and that means that I’m not bringing my best self to anything I’m involved in.

Time to take my foot off the brake, loosen my grip on the wheel and trust the road.

“Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You’ll sail the perfect line..”

-bob seger “in your time”

At this very moment, I’m waiting for the sun to melt enough of the six or eight inches of snow in my driveway so that I can go to class tonight. Whether or not it will clear up enough remains to be seen. It looks promising- the sun is shining, the wind is blowing- these are all very positive signs. I don’t know right now, though, if there will be enough sun, if it will get warm enough, if it will be safe enough for me to forge ahead with my plans.

This particular situation in no way parallels any other situation in my life. At all. Certainly not a situation in which I’m a little more emotionally invested, or one in which I am so anxious to know the outcome that if it were a book I would read the last page today, or at least skip ahead a few chapters just to see where the characters are a little further along in the plot.  Not a parallel to be had, no sir, not at all…

Of course I realize that waiting is important. Necessary. An act of self preservation, of caution and prudence and maturity. You don’t take a cake out of the oven before it’s baked through, you don’t take a fiberglass and aluminum two wheel drive paid for car out if it’s going to be icy. That is when things get messy; when accidents happen, when poor decisions are made, property is damaged and people get hurt. Plus there is no cake, just a gooey mess that might give you worms. No one wants worms, especially when they are so easily prevented by just letting the cake bake till that toothpick comes out clean and you’re ready for frosting.

Some people are able to relish the waiting- they love the smell of a cake filling the house as it bakes; they want to want that first piece of cake so badly that they’re drooling before they cut it.

I’m the girl that scrapes every last bit of leftover batter out of the bowl with the spatula, eats the frosting with a tall glass of milk while she works, and has a wicked stomachache by the time the oven timer rings.

Oh baby don’t it feel like heaven right now
Don’t it feel like something from a dream
Yeah I’ve never known nothing quite like this
Don’t it feel like tonight might never be again
We know better than to try and pretend
Baby no one could’a ever told me ’bout this
I said yeah yeah

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

-Tom Petty “The Waiting”

Resolutions are easily made and easily broken. I’ve gone down that road before, and this year, the only resolution-type thing I’ve got is getting up on time. Mostly because it just got way out of control last year.

Goals, however, are another matter, and I’ve given mine a lot of thought. I’m on the right path- most of these are obvious and unchanged. Keep working on my degree (long term), get into Western Carolina University (short term). Keep my job (short term) and continue to position myself via my performance and shrewd politics for a steady upward path in my company (long term). Keep writing (short term), while dreaming and planning for the time in my life when I can pursue more opportunities in it (long term). Have as much fun as possible (short term), while keeping my eyes and heart open to a future with someone (way long term).

My only hard and fast goal for this year is to apply for admission and be accepted to Western Carolina University for the fall term. First, I must conquer my x = death, pestilence and famine issues. Second, I must summon transcripts and certificates from three or four different places. Third, I believe I have to write an essay. Fourth, I’m pretty sure there’s a strip search and a urine sample required. It is quite the undertaking, and as luck would have it, my only class for the spring term is French, and it’s a campus/internet hybrid. Here’s to hoping that scoring A’s in Intermediate Accounting and Entrepreneurship assured that my GPA meets their requirements, which if memory serves is 3.5 or better.

Execution has become a problem for me in the past year, and I’ve grown so very tired of putting out fires and flying by the seat of my pants.

My theme for 2010: Be Good to Yourself.

Not in that have another piece of cake, you really can afford that purchase, you deserve a mental health day type of way.

More like getting enough sleep, having enough fun, eating higher quality food, making a point of being active without torturing myself about it, doing what I’m supposed to when I’m supposed to so I’m not so stressed out waiting for something to slip through the cracks.

I’ve survived, and now it’s time to thrive.

Don’t you think?