2003-10-31 | 5:45 p.m.
Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile initially scared me to death. --Betty Bender

from the earliest i can remember to as few as 4 years ago i had a pretty good idea of where my life was going. when i take a few steps back from my life now, i see that i am in a place far distant from there. not that i'm complaining. i have a great job where i learn lots and lots and that i actually enjoy. i live in a city where there is never a shortage of things happening and where it is sunny and 72 degrees just about year 'round. most of all, i have my jeffrey. i couldn't hope for someone who i enjoy more or who understands so much about me or who makes me happier.

and yet. and yet i am scared. i am so scared of really having no idea what i'm doing or how i'm going to reach the goals i have for my life given the way my life is now opposed to the way i had expected it to turn out. does that even make any sense?

... it's kinda like i had planned to be a surgeon. learned about the profession, planned my life towards going to medical school, did the right extracurricular activities, took the right classes, got the education and training, and then discovered that what i really wanted to be was a professor, that this would be exponentially more fulfilling to me than being a surgeon. but i didn't have any training for it, no preparation, or even any forethought as to how to go about becoming a professor or how it ought to play out.

i couldn't go about being a surgeon and then live my life in regret and longing for this thing that i knew would make me feel supremely happy and fulfilled, and it's not like one of them is intrinsically better than the other causing it to be a decision of right and wrong, just really... scary.

and as much as i have been - in my various circles of friends, in my family, at work - the brave one and the strong one and the one with the answers...

i am afraid.