doing scary things

Bravery. Courage. Daring. Heart. 

It's interesting to think of the number of things I've done, or decisions I've made based upon pure fear. How being scared of a thing controls, and by controls I mean I allow myself to be controlled, my actions. Frankly I'm quite sick of it. Sick enough of it for some seriously drastic action. I lost, and by lost I mean threw away, FOR A SECOND TIME the best chance at happiness over a bunch of fear. Fuck. Fear of not being the right one, fear of not being good enough, fear of failure, fear of hurting someone, fear of losing myself, fear of moving and having it go wrong again, fear of moving and having it go right, fear of getting and keeping a new job, fear of moving forward and out of my inertial fuge of malaise, et cetera. Gotta be careful because I'm edging into punishment territory there. I wish I could lay everything at the hands of stupidity and at the lack of control over my own life, but I'm not that dumb. Nor am I without a certain measure of control. I'm 38 years old, and the fact that I haven't taken my own life and future into my hands and make good, correct, positive decisions to move my life forward really makes me sad. The fact that my poor decisions, or lack of decisions, or lack of action have culminated into this mess I call my life really makes me sad. Like cry yourself to sleep nightly sad. 

My efforts to get myself out of this lull have been pathetic. My shameful actions/decisions have been horrific. Recognizing this doesn't do me any good other than stroking that part of me that likes to be shamed and punished for things. 

I have to get out of this town. I like this place, but there is no future for me here. I can feel it driving around, sitting in my apartment, and even hanging out with my family. There really is nothing here for me. And there's nothing for me in Columbia Missouri either. That place might as well be Evansville in Missouri, without my family. I cannot move from one dead end place to another. I may have to move there temporarily to keep the job I have just to pay my bills but I'm minimizing the "temporary" to as little time as possible. 

I have to get back what I lost. I have to get myself back, my confidence, my resolve, my courage ... my life. That depends partially on my job, I won't deny that the year of searching has impacted my confidence and another year isn't going to help any, but so is just finding something, and that's a fine line I have to walk. I took a severe step back in my career taking my current job, and I was sort of okay with that for a little while, but the psychological toll that has taken on me is measurable. I need to go sideways, at a minimum, and sideways at this point is a pretty low bar. Part of my problem in prior searches is that I aimed high with little regard for sideways. At this point sideways is forward if it means getting out of this town and somewhere with a future. Somewhere I can get myself back. 

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on lots of things, I keep looking at one place in particular, Florida. Let's face it, what I want is in Florida. Knowing the possibility that I'm still wanted in Florida is lower than my chances at winning the lottery doesn't change that at all. That's where my heart, my mind and my body and my soul wants to go. Provided I can find a job there, ignoring the fact that I've been failing for almost a year now at finding one, that's where I'm going. Yes, every day I have to observe and assess the pause my brain interjects into my thought processes and decision in that regard. There's really only one thing that's going to keep me from going there, and that's being told not to come. That is a question I'll have to ask before going, and that's a conversation I don't know how to approach. There has to be two sides to a conversation, and everything depends on that other side first wanting to have any conversation at all, and there's plenty of good reasons not to. It may be a really stupid thing to do, to put all of my effort into a cause that is quite possibly (due to my own actions) a dead end, but happiness sometimes has to be chased without intellect. 

But, talk is cheap.