Inside of me, In spite of me

If you had told me a year ago that I'd lose my job in September, I would not have believed you. If you'd told me two weeks ago that I'd be starting a new job, you could never have convinced me that I'd feel this much anxiety about it.

This is different, and it's not fear. I'm VERY excited. And I really think I'll like and excel at the job. But for every bit of that there's a knot in my stomach. And when I say that, I mean it feels like someone kicked me, and hard.

So, Today: I made up my mind to at LEAST keep busy and I did pretty well. I went to the dog run with Henry, got some watercolor pencils and then did a painting, wandered around SoHo, talked to my mom for a half hour and then my sister for two hours sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge*, and then walked from the Brooklyn side to Grand Central. Unremarkable, fun and relaxing.

But I have also been sorting out complicated feelings about what's next.

I have learned some very hard lessons during this time where I was not working. Things I needed to learn and needed to learn here and at this very point in my life. I kept faith every single day that it happened for a reason and that when it was over I would be improved. And I know the ways it's happened, and how I've changed and I have to make that make me unstoppable. If I can make it through that, here, now, then I can do anything. I don't think I was this tense when I took the job up here the first time, but perhaps I was little bit arrogant then.

It's like all those months of not working and being so afraid suddenly crashed home. Trying to sort it out I thought "I should be relieved that I don't have to be afraid anymore..." but really there is some truth to the fact that I am letting it all out now because I don't have to be BRAVE anymore. And I find that I'm not afraid.

So, why the anxiety? I feel like I've been through a lot lately and came out ok, but the pressure is really on me to keep that momentum and purpose going. Analogy? It feels like opening night. (If you don't know, auditions are nothing compared to rehearsal.) When the curtain eventually falls: I'll look back on the coming months as the time that in many ways, I really made a sort of debut.

:) Stress free, right?

Writing here has helped. Maybe it sounds melodramatic, but you know I have to say how writing is cathartic, and has, in fact, proven a real life saver and will continue to in the fiction I write and in this blog. If there's anything I remembered in all this time it's how passionate I am about writing.

I toyed with the idea of not publishing this to some degree, but I figure any one who would hang on this long is probably close enough that I would (or SHOULD) just say it anyway. You know who you are, and I owe such thanks I don't know where to start, but know that I mean to. For now, be happy for me, WITH me, but know that I am an Amanda who will see (make) things happen.

I'm standing on the edge of something huge. Thank you for not letting me give up.

So let's have it Monday, the first day of the rest of my life.