happy-birthday-2

Im discouraged, I feel like I am destined for shitty jobs… Why didn’t my parents force me to go to collage to be a nurse? Why didn’t they force me to work as a secretary as young as possible, so that by now id have tons of experience in the corporate world?

Funny how my (our) first response when something isn’t going the way we want, the way we thought we find someone to blame.  They didn’t force me because they always gave me freedom. Freedom to make my own path. Freedom to follow what I thought I wanted or thought was right. They never told me I couldn’t pursue my dreams.

The only person who did was ME.

I feel like I am on the edge of “The Giving Up Abyss.”

You know that hole?

Getting a job in a field I don’t want and being under paid for working loads of hours feels like a death sentence on my dreams.  It feels like I am saying ok… I am throwing my hands up… Im done… You beat me…

Desperately I cling to the how’s? How do I keep going? How do I make money with my passions? My talents? How do I get from here to there? How do I get more clients? How do they do it? How do I do it? How can I make good money AND be happy? Why does it seem you can have one but not both?

So that hole… that hole is looming and it is getting bigger. Day by day growing. Making it harder to tip toe around without falling. Falling far… far down the dark hole of dead dreams. Everyday my resolve weakens. Is it resilience and Courage? or just plain naivety and stupidity to keep going? To get up again and again and try over and over? I do keep going though. Because I have too. That is my only reason.

When I even think about giving up; I feel in my stomach this sort of dying I can’t explain. When I look at the hole thinking about raising my hands in defeat, I feel a catch in my throat. Meaning this would be the ultimate silencing. That I would cease to be ME.

I don’t want to cease to be ME. So…. Still I’ll Rise.

“Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”

-Maya Angelou