I go through life sometimes writing out blog posts in my head… and let me tell you, they are perfect on the first draft, and everything I want to say… then by the time I actually sit down at my computer and try to type out sentences, it all gets lost, jumbled, becomes unclear… and as a writer this is really frustrating… what is in my head isn’t translating to the page… somehow it makes me feel like I’m failing at communicating…

Right now is one of those moments… I had this entire stream of consciousness blog drafted in my head about being a night owl, loneliness, starting over, forming new dreams, letting go… and I’m really struggling right now to get it onto the page… I guess I just have to keep typing and hope that some of the issues between my brain and the keyboard will work themselves out….

I guess it is my blog, and if I want to have random snippets  of thought pieced together I can…

Here is the thing about being unemployed… you get way less e-mails. In some ways this is very freeing… though if you are like me and totally addicted to your phone it makes the constant checking way less exciting…. What do you mean I only have 2 new e-mails and they are both from Pinterest?  But on the bright side, it is giving me real motivation to actually read the e-mails I subscribe to. I actually open the Writers Almanac when it is delivered, and yesterday rather than just immediately junking the daily e-mail from Yoga Journal, I actually opened it and read an entire article… yay free time.

Turns out the article was all about dealing with personal crisis and the steps for dealing with it and reaching spiritual maturity… which is kind of exactly what I needed to be reading (but really the title of the email was the Awakening… no way I would have normally opened it).

There is a section in the article called “Facing the void” and as I was reading I realized that my space of transition is still really centered on my failed relationship. You’d think I’d be more lost without the job I’ve had for the past five years, because so much of my identity was wrapped up with where I worked… and yet here I am, only a week out of the job, and I’m completely ready to let it go, to move on, to start a new chapter… and yet I was only in this relationship for a brief moment, and I cannot seem to get past it… which is really unfortunate since he has already moved on… and it’s not like I’m carrying this torch expecting him to come running back… I’m too much of a realist and a cynic when it comes to love… but its more like I’m scared to let go of the person that I was in that relationship… I’m scared of moving on.

Its so hard to admit that, and to process it, and to realize that its where I am… I mean at the end of the day its not like it was the best relationship… and I’m sure part of it is a fear of being hurt again, a fear of opening up, and a fear of starting over.

Being alone doesn’t scare me… I mean yes, loneliness is a daily battle for me… but its also something that I’m pretty used to… its not crippling or overwhelming… its just kind of like a dull ache, its there and you are aware of it, but you power through.  For me it is by far the worst first thing in the morning… I remember having a late night conversation with my ex about how much he hated coming home from work to an empty apartment…. I’m the opposite… I like coming home at the end of the day, settling into a routine, being able to curl up with a book, or mindless tv and just veg… I can turn my brain off, and drift off to the sounds of the snoring bulldog and something playing on Netflix… and then the morning rolls around, and I wake up, and its hits me… I’m waking up alone, starting the day alone, facing life alone. There is no one to say good morning, no first phone call, or text message, no one to share coffee with, no one to motivate you, no one to push you to be better… and eventually I suck it up, I get out of bed, I power through… but some days it is easier than others.  I think this is why over the past few weeks I’ve really reverted back to my night owl tendencies…  give me the late nights, and the warm bed, and the good book, and the bad tv… especially when there isn’t something concrete I have to do in the morning… I could go to bed early, and get up early… but when the night time is so comfortable, and the mornings are so hard, it just seems reasonable to stay up late, and put off the morning…

I don’t want it to sound like I have trouble getting out of bed, that I’m struggling with crippling depression or anything like that. I actually do get out of bed every day… I am productive every day, I’ve even been exercising everyday … but I am also lonely everyday…

I guess I’m bringing all of this up because for me, my job was a distraction from this… and now I have less to distract me… which is good… I’m realizing that this is a journey, and I probably have a lot of things I need to weed through, and emotions I need to deal with… I actually hate it that I’m more upset about losing a 2 month relationship than I am about losing a 5 year job… I’d like to think that the job impacted my identity way more than he did… that living away from the job will be harder than letting go of  the idea of him…ok not so much the idea of him, but the idea of us…

I’m actually starting to view losing my job as a good thing… I know that in the long run it was holding me back… it was safe and secure, and there isn’t anything wrong with wanting to feel safe and secure at your job, but it was also frustrating… and I know that there were times I let it hold me back. I was constantly thinking “I love my life, I love my job, I love where I live… I just wish I had someone to share all of that with”  and now without the constraints of the job, maybe I can find someone to build a life with, rather than trying to find someone who will fit into my existing life.

I’m quite sure this is the most challenging part of dating… I look at all my friends who met the people they are dating/ married to in college, and it makes so much sense, because rather than growing and maturing individually, you get to grow and mature together. You figure out what you want together, and you have the chance to cultivate your identity with another person, you make choices together, you shape your lives together…  I’ve shaped my life completely 100% on my own… I’ve made my own choices, I’ve followed my own passions, and I’ve spent the last several years really discovering who I am, and making choices that have shaped my identity. I’ve been able to be selfish, because you are allowed to be a little selfish when you are a single twenty-something… and so here I am, feeling like I’m finally comfortable in my own skin, like I know what I want, what my goals are, and who I am… but I got here on my own… and it feels really challenging to be able to let someone else into that… more-so it feels challenging to be able to take someone else’s goals and dreams and passions, and try to figure out a way to entangle them with mine…and it seems a little overwhelming to hope that I will be able to find a person with their own passions and talents, and goals and dreams, and somehow figure out a way to seamlessly mesh our two lives together without completely losing ourselves… actually it seems a little overwhelming, because I did have this… I had this exactly and I’m afraid at what my odds might be for finding it again…

And now I’m just rambling… I hoped that if I kept typing my thoughts would become less jumbled, but I think the opposite is starting to happen, so I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.

I’m going to get off the couch, do a little meditating, drink the rest of my green smoothie, and head into my afternoon. I’m going to be confident, I’m going to stand up straight, I’m going to interview for a job I think I could actually be really good at, and I’m going to have dinner with my girlfriends.  I’m going to take one moment at a time… and I’m going to work on me… cause at this point, what else do I have?