Things I’ve learned this month

I met with Theresa last Tuesday and she helped me realize a few things:

I Am Extremely Anxious.

When it comes to my room I don’t care for keeping it tidy, but under the layers of tried-on clothes and empty chip bags you’d find that most of my things are extremely organized in specific categories. I love to organize. Hell, I love to plan to organize. When I went on my trip to Austin I set up a diagram of all of the items of clothing I was bringing along. I matched up all possible outfit ideas in order to know what to wear right away every day for any occasion.

Long story short, I really frickin’ love organizing.

With that comes the idea of 8 cities in 8 years. My love for organization, budgeting, and planning can sometime overwhelm me. I created a binder containing every minute detail involved in my first move. I’ve already calculated how much I’ll be making at my current job in comparison to my goal. Even with reducing my hourly pay by $2 and accounting for any surprises, I’ll still make my $3000 budget.

However, no amount of planning can account for the unknown.

This makes me extremely anxious. I didn’t really realize how anxious I was until I sat in Theresa’s office and began talking about how I’m doing. As I rambled at a thousand words a minute my face started to feel hot, my palms were sweaty, and I couldn’t stop fiddling.

Theresa asked me to breathe with her to try to relax. I started to smile. She asked why I was smiling. All I could think about was the fact that instead of doing breathing exercises I could be planning or sorting things out. For a second, breathing seemed like a waste of time.

I think my anxiety truly comes from my deadline. Deadlines are supposed to do that to you. Though Theresa doesn’t necessarily think that not leaving by January 1st is failing, I certainly do. My mom certainly will. It’s just one of those things that I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive myself for if it doesn’t happen on January 1st.

I Have Done So Much In The Month I’ve Been Home

Though I am anxious, I have to give myself a lot of credit. I came home August 27th. It is now October 1st. It has barely been a month and I have managed to do so much. I decided to start my journey a year earlier, gave myself a deadline, found someone to take over my lease at my old apartment, quit my city job, moved back home, got two job offers the day after I got home, started working, started TA-ing for my club DJ 2 class, paid all of my final bills, planned everything for austin down to the tee, began rehearsals for 8 different charity shows I’m volunteering for, and somehow still managed to date here and there.

Just typing it sounds exhausting. I think the reason I was so anxious at Theresa’s was because it was the first time since I got back that I stopped for a second and reflected on my situation.

I’m Doing Everything That I Can

Getting away with things when I was in my deep depression was a lot easier for me. If I stepped in a puddle and wanted to give up on my whole day, I felt like I could. If I didn’t complete something in time, I cut myself slack. I knew that achieving things felt very impossible because I never actually had the energy to fully commit to them.

Now that I’m feeling a lot better and have my head on straight, I feel a lot more pressure to do things correctly.

I think failing when you know you could have done more hurts less than failing when you’ve done everything you possibly can. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that. I’ve experienced achieving my goals with less effort than necessary, but never failing when I did everything in my power to win.

I’m doing everything in my power to win.

It scares the hell out of me. If I don’t leave January 1st, it’s not because of depression. It’s not because of my job, or my family. It’s because I did everything humanly possible and it still wasn’t enough.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this.

The only comfort I have is that because I’ve done everything I can, there’s nothing left to do but continue that. Continue saving, reaching my weekly goals, keeping my eyes on the prize, and making my dream a reality.

91 days, 9 hours, 56 minutes, 40 seconds

-Jess