just decide already

Why is it that I cannot make a decision, be done with it and be content?

Instead, I spend countless hours fretting over whether I have made the right choice.  I become anxious about each one, lest I do the wrong thing and end up disappointing someone else.  And instead I am constantly disappointed.

So my life is full of regret.  Every decision analyzed and re-analyzed.  Always looking back, poring over past decisions, wondering what my life would have been like if I had gone in another direction.

If only I had fought to be a biology major instead of giving up and studying art.

If only I had made better choices with the men I have dated.

If only I hadn't stayed so long in doomed relationships.

If only I had been more willing to work on others whose flaws I allowed to overshadow their strengths.

If only I had been more aggressive in job searches instead of taking the first ones found and offered.

If only I had learned how to live within my means instead of getting so far into debt I can't see out of the hole.

An I know that there is nothing I can do about the past.  I can only look forward and try to make better choices in the future.

Which is a problem in itself.

I just cannot seem to live in the present.  To take things as they come.  To stop wishing that my life will start and live in the moment.  Carpe diem and all that.  And while I know a lot of things about myself, I don't know why this is.  And I don't begin to know how to figure it out.

A brief history of me.

 Jobs Wanted, Any Jobs at All

This piece made me think about how I felt when I graduated from college and how I still feel about myself and my "career." 

I don't remember receiving any career advice along the way.  I had next to no idea about what I was going to do to support myself.  I stayed on over the summer after my graduation working nights in the Public Safety office and sleeping the days away in a basement dorm room that had no air conditioning.  I had very little human contact, but I planned a roadtrip.  I tried, studiously, to avoid thinking about a future beyond that.  I surfed the internet, I pored over maps and I pretended that everything would just fall into place when it was supposed to.

Then the summer ended and I had to go home.  I hated home.  So, I drank too much.  I still hated home.  I worked for a few weeks as the secretary of my parents' church and I was hung over every day. 

I went on my roadtrip.  I drove from the east coast to the west coast and back with my best friend.

At times it was liberating... and frustrating... and joyful... and depressing.  But,  mostly it was painfully beautiful.  And I wanted so badly to never come home, to never have to make a decision about what to do with my career or anything else, and to stay out there in the great wide open.  We camped under the stars and in the snow, wandered around National Parks and big cities, visited oceans and lakes and rivers, hiked in deserts, mountains and forests.

And sometime during the trip, I think that it was in New Mexico, I decided that I wanted to be a park ranger. 

on community and my atheism

I have to say that "community" is the one thing that I miss about being an atheist.  I cannot abide organized religion for the hypocrisy that members and leaders show (or the belief in deities) but losing the community they provide might be just as bad.  There really isn't anything else like a congregation to espouse love of your fellow man.  I am not saying that I need a God to fear to make me act in a moral manner, just that not having a stake in a community can have the same result.

We are way too isolated with our Blackberries and our computers and our iPhones and our video games.  Online community is all well and good, but I think that we need actual face to face time as well.  You cannot empathize if you haven't had contact with that to which your empathy should be directed and I think that there are too few online communities that translate themselves into flesh and blood groups.

expectations

I watch a lot of tv. My therapist seems to think maybe I watch too much tv.

She's probably right.

I like the escape. I think it's better than my life.

My favorite shows are aimed at teenagers. Kids who have their lives ahead of them and will meet all of the expectations that they, and their parents, have laid out before them. Whether it's the job or the partner or whatever.

I am constantly wishing that I could go back and do it over. That I hadn't fucked it up then. That I could take advantage of the world of possibilities open to me. That I'd taken a different path, a better path. That I'd been charmed too.

And so, I think I have completely unrealistic expectations when it comes to the course my life has taken.

I desperately want to have the dream job that I can't wait to get to every morning and perfect children who do cute and funny things that I record meticulously on my blog which has thousands of readers. I want a sister and/or a brother who is insufferably witty and loves me for who I am and does everything to help me follow my dreams. I want grandparents who are richer than Donald Trump and want nothing more than to spend their every dime on me and a mother who is my best friend and a father who is fantastically successful at all he does. I want a huge extended family that loves and supports me no matter what. I want to be skinny and beautiful and wear all of the right stuff and mento find me incredibly attractive and smart. I want to be successful at everything I try.

None of these things is reListic on it's own, but all together? No one had that.

But, I feel like I EXPECT that these things can and will magically happen with little or no effort in my part and when they don't I feel like a failure.

So, I spend a lot of time feeling like a failure.

I compare myself to everyone around me. They all seem to have the things I want and don't know how to get. .

And then I think that I have this horribly mediocre life. Albeit with some pretty great friends but rhen there are the overpretective parents who can barely get by and want to know every derail of my life, four dead penniless grandparents, no siblings to count on, nor loving partner, and a job that is boring but just tolerable on the best of days.

Oh, yeah, and no motivation or ambition and a heavy dose of depression to boot.

So here I sit. Feeling old and hopelessly inadequate. All because of pop culture and my own lack of a feeling of self. And you would think that all of this would turn me against the teen comedies and dramas. But it's like a train wreck and I can't stop watching.