How genuinely are you going to live? How afraid are you going to be?
For how many more years are you going to let your demons conquer you?
You are only in your 30s.It is not too late to start over.
In fact, I hope you start over all the time. Not by burning bridges or
ditching town or closing yourself to what you have, but by no longer
fearing what you don’t. I hope you spend your free afternoons working
on the skills you need to have the job you want someday. I hope you
accept that you’re not supposed to look the way you did in high school,
or really want the same things. I hope you ask yourself: “What do I want
now?” every time it occurs to you to do so. I hope you learn that there
is only one way to guide your life, and it is by consistently focusing
on the next right step.
Genuinely unhappy people are never upset by their circumstances; they
are upset because they have externalized their power. They put their faith
in finding the right person as opposed to being able to attract and choose
the right person. They put their faith in finding the right job, in the
right economy, as opposed to honing their skills to the point that a
company would be remiss to overlook them.
If you want to genuinely start over, clear the slate of everything you
ever thought about how to get your life together. Don’t predict, project,
mind-read, assume. Don’t imagine a better elevator speech. Don’t only think
of what it makes sense to do. Think of what it feels right to do. Not what
your impulses say, not what your laziness says, not what your fear says.
Those things have probably gotten you where you are. But a layer beneath
them is a more resolute voice, and it will tell you which way to go. You
only have to get quiet, listen and act.
Learn to live your life more than you’re inclined to sit around wondering
about it. You can’t reflect your way into a new existence, but you can think
yourself into paralysis. If you know, at your core, that you must start over.
Autumn 