High Dive

Do you ever make plans with a friend of yours who you have so much respect and admiration for that you start feeling a bit small right before you rush off to see them?

I do. I probably feel this way about more than one of my friends. I know that it's nobody's fault. It's surely not theirs for being so awesome and I refuse to take the blame for feeling so tender.

I tend to have a lot of shame about the place I am in career wise and financially at this stage in my life. I feel like most of the people I know are so much further along the path than I am. It's not for lack of trying, that's for sure. I feel like I have been on an archeological dig for the last 10 yrs. with no bones to show the boss man.

Last week during a visit with a lovely friend of mine, one who is in law school and practically engaged to a Harvard medical student, I found myself saying to her with a certain amount of self pity, "I have just never been one of those people who has always known exactly what they wanted to do." She said something back to me that struck a chord. It is not something I had never heard before but yet it was as if I was really hearing it for the first time. "I don't think most people do always know what they want to do. I just felt it was time to decide on something, and I really liked law. It is something I feel even more passionate about now that I am this far into it. At this point I've committed and sacrificed so much to this path there is no going back."

Hmmm...It was a light bulb moment. Maybe I've been looking so hard for"the work I was put on earth to do" that I have been eliminating things (careers) that aren't PERFECT. Now, I know every career has it's ups and downs, but I have had this idea in my mind that there is one specific job out there for me and I have refused to settle until I found "it." Maybe there isn't just one perfect job for everyone but many that would be great for each person. Maybe it's time that I just leaped into what I love and think I might be great at, even if it doesn't fall into the diameters of a title, or even a job or career I've ever heard of. Perhaps I have thought that if I looked hard enough I would one day stumble upon the perfect job for me wrapped up in a neat little package complete with a manual on how to get from point A to point B and a list of all responsibilities and what to expect. Has this been my problem?

Maybe it's time I quit watching all the big kids jump off the high dive and go ahead and do it

myself.

xoxo ~ Ashley