When you realize you’ve been a total A**

I’ve always found it hard to put a value on my work. For me, working was never about ‘making it big’, and truth be told if I could make it so I only ever had enough to support myself and my friends, I wouldn’t care what that take home number was. Honestly, I grew up wanting to be a writer – so eventually I talked myself into thinking a two story card board fort on the side of a really nice road would be perfect as long as I was inspiring one or two people with my work.

Looking at my life now, a couple things didn’t turn out how I thought they would. My love life is a mess, my floors are carpeted rather than paved, I haven’t finished or published a book and my most popular blog to date at work is on goat yoga. I have no clue how I got here and now that I have I am so afraid to lose it that I’m just waiting for the shoe to drop and doing what I can to self sabotage along the way.

so how did this all start?

Well lately I got a job. One where I am so out of my depth and so to compensate [over compensate] for feeling insecure, I tend to act proud – too proud because on the outside it makes it seem like I have a clue… I don’t.

Truth is, I thought by the time I got a full time job I would be able to settle down, start believing I had some semblance of a life and finally feel like I had it together – I don’t. Truth is, I am just as lost as I was three months ago and the only difference now is that I have to hide this huge sense of guilt that I have been given an opportunity I don’t deserve. Maybe other people share this feeling. Like the successes that find us aren’t always the ones we’ve earned and no matter what we do we’re just chasing this idea that we can make someone proud.

I don’t know about you – but I hate feeling like an A** just as much as my friends hate when I am one. So the truth is – I’m sorry. I’m sorry I got/continue to get caught up in the idea that this step forward is bigger than it is. At the end of the day – I am still learning how to do this adult thing, and I know my friends are too, I just hope I don’t forget to show how grateful I am to them [to friends new and old] because life is scary, I am petrified and I couldn’t be where I am today without the amazing people that got me here today.

Truth is

I can’t promise I wont continue to mess up, I can’t promise I’ll make a difference yet but I want to. I look around and I see so many people that inspire me. Roommates, friends, strangers, all doing things that leave them exhausted and fulfilled and – and while most days I like to think that the little things I am doing now will make a difference when I finally feel my feet beneath me again – I can’t say that I am defining what our future will be and look like – but they can.

So to the friends I brag to, and the strangers who might understand what this feels like – I’m sorry.

and thanks to you I now know how to do better – and to be better – and it is all because of you that I know I have been changed for the better too.

Thank you.

-R