We Have A Barrel Full of Wine
"It's not about you, really. This is what I have to do." I have been practicing the ways to say it in my head. Eight hours of thinking about it and my spirit feels like a punching bag, like I've got too much carbonic acid pooling in my stomach. I don't want to have the conversation and I know there's no easy way to do it and the problem is that I have to. There are all of these thoughts swirling around the issue and the one I hate the most is: did I rush? I think about Nick and the timing of everything.
I am too quick to discount my own opinion of things. One day this career path is intriguing. The next day, that one. I need to work on winnowing down my thoughts and trusting my judgment. I am afraid, afraid, afraid. I am afraid that this is the only thing I'll love doing and that I'll never get the chance to try it because of the rips and tears in someone else's life. Fissures in the foundation. I am a tightrope walker with an ulcer and I vacillate wildly between raising the balance bar high overhead and just quitting the thing entirely. "Sorry that you were a complete and total idiot."
I remember one night being upstairs in the Feve with Anne and Libby, way before any of us were the people we are now. If possible I was less able to express myself back then. We were talking about possibility, and I remember feeling with a deterministic certainty that one day I would be a detective -- not that I had necessarily chosen that for myself at the time, but that I had realized that it was my destiny and had resolved myself to it. It was a very safe feeling. I was glad to have it. I put it in my back pocket and have never once forgotten it.
When did I become so wishy-washy?
This is what I would tell myself if I were one of the kids and had come to my office and sat in the chair in front of my desk, panic-eyed and bewildered:
Figure out what you need to do to be successful, and do it. Nothing is unattainable. If someone else was able to do it, so are you.
And I would believe it, whole-heartedly.
I am too quick to discount my own opinion of things. One day this career path is intriguing. The next day, that one. I need to work on winnowing down my thoughts and trusting my judgment. I am afraid, afraid, afraid. I am afraid that this is the only thing I'll love doing and that I'll never get the chance to try it because of the rips and tears in someone else's life. Fissures in the foundation. I am a tightrope walker with an ulcer and I vacillate wildly between raising the balance bar high overhead and just quitting the thing entirely. "Sorry that you were a complete and total idiot."
I remember one night being upstairs in the Feve with Anne and Libby, way before any of us were the people we are now. If possible I was less able to express myself back then. We were talking about possibility, and I remember feeling with a deterministic certainty that one day I would be a detective -- not that I had necessarily chosen that for myself at the time, but that I had realized that it was my destiny and had resolved myself to it. It was a very safe feeling. I was glad to have it. I put it in my back pocket and have never once forgotten it.
When did I become so wishy-washy?
This is what I would tell myself if I were one of the kids and had come to my office and sat in the chair in front of my desk, panic-eyed and bewildered:
Figure out what you need to do to be successful, and do it. Nothing is unattainable. If someone else was able to do it, so are you.
And I would believe it, whole-heartedly.
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