The cynical optimist

I have been trying to write this post for awhile now…but the words have always failed me, they just never seemed to capture what I trying to say. Hopefully what comes next make sense…

We are now 4 days into 2020.

I’m newly 28 years old with my birthday being only 2 weeks ago.

2 years ago I got promoted at my job and got engaged.

1 year ago I decided I was finally going to allow myself to have a voice after years of telling myself I was better off silent.

This year, well I don’t know. And the year after that I don’t know. It feels like this path to being a better version of myself has lead me to the precipice of change and now I’m standing on the edge of a sheer cliff and 2020 is going to force me to curl up and hide or take that leap of faith and hope I find purchase.

The only thing is I don’t know what I hope to find purchase on. The only dream I have is to be an author, to tell stories, to help people and to try to put out some light in the world through the books I write. If that fails I don’t know what comes next. I have no backup. Everything I think of as a safe option doesn’t feel right. I can’t imagine the job I have right now being a career because at the very least I have a strained relationship with it.

I’m engaged and we need to start making plans for a wedding, a house, a future together and the thought of leaving what I know is terrifying because I have the belief that I will screw it up somehow and I’d end up back where I began, months or years wasted.

My parents are getting older and sometimes I think about the days when I won’t have them anymore and I panic.

Some days it feels like the future is coming on too quickly, the breaks are out on the train and all I can do is hold on tight and go for the ride.

And to some extent that is true.

The future, the uncertainty of it all, the change, it’s inevitable and while I am terrified I also have to move forward in hope because Hope is the only thing that will get me to move.

I have to have hope that I will make it as an author because if I don’t then I will never begin querying which is a goal of mine this year.

I have to have hope that I can make it on my own in the world because if I don’t I will never leave the house.

I have to have hope that things will turn out the way that they turn out and even if those things result in failure I will be fine because if I don’t I will never try anything.

So yeah, all of this to say that I am terrified of 2020, of all the changes and uncertainty that this year may bring but I also know that I have hope, that I have faith, and that I will find purchase on the other side no matter what awaits me over there.