dom's longest summer vacation.
my stomach has been fluttery with anxiety about literally everything happening in my life right now. presently: okay, i got into a new program, great! am i going to find a job i can balance with school? am i going to be able to balance a job with school? am i going to be able to handle this commute? am i going to be able to handle this program altogether???
nearly every day this month i have asked myself if someone like me is cut out for this world. particularly for goals like this. big, big goals that have always made sense for other people but never seemed possible for me. i'm usually not one to shortchange myself, especially on expectations, but i keep asking myself can i actually do this? nearly nine months of waiting, discerning, closed doors and the resulting alternate routes -- because the only way out is through -- couldn't be for nothing, right?
and so what if i didn't do all of this ten years ago like i'd intended to? i'd dug myself so deep at that point that i wouldn't have been ready for anything life threw at me. i could barely call to schedule an appointment with my orthodontist. i think the truth of the matter is that i needed the ensuing years to learn how to force myself through my own discomfort because life wasn't going to just hand me things. and so far that's done me more good than anything.
my biggest earworm right now is a repetitive, unknown voice telling me i'm too old to be going back to school for more than two years. i'll be thirty-three in two months. and yet people have done this much older. i could be doing this much older. i think that in either case, i would end up at the same conclusion, with the same nagging resolve to see this through. so really, what could be so wrong about me doing it right now?
anyway. i'm rambling, because i don't know what else to do with the next couple of hours while i wait nervously to meet with my advisor for the first time. the noise is loudest right now: will she tell me i'm making a mistake? will she understand my vision for myself and believe in it without so much convincing? i know this comes in part from poor experiences with my undergraduate advisors, especially as a kid who didn't understand how to advocate for myself. hopefully, things will be different this time around.
in any case, i know who does believe in me: the small amount of family who know, and the even smaller amount of friends who know. and, surprisingly, me. i know i've written about this before, about how leaving industry would be something i did at any cost. but i didn't know that way of thinking would lead me here, at the base of a seemingly insurmountable climb that somehow i feel ready to do. who is this person? and what would the younger me think of her?
aagh, i'm just going to eat lunch and tell my brain to be quiet.
