On Late Blooming

This is not going to be the tale of "How Christy Developed at Age 23." Sorry if I got your hopes up!

Lately I've been thinking about how my life has progressed so far. I turned 33 yesterday, I passed my phlebotomy certification course the day before that, and it looks possible that we could move out of this podunk and on to bigger, better things. Then, I got to thinking about how is it people much younger than myself seem to have accomplished so, so much more in less time than I've been on this planet? I have no answer to that beyond they put in the effort. And maybe they went to a better system of schools and had more encouraging family than I did. But no blame here, just mere reflection.

I know I'm not alone in the whole "I don't know what I wanna be when I grow up" department. I do envy those people who have it all figured out by kindergarten. My sister is one of those types. Our brother probably was, too, seems like he was set on mechanic from an early age. They're both Capricorns. Draw your own mystical conclusions. Katie said early on she wanted to be a pediatrician. That has evolved into RN, which she will finish within the next year and a half I believe, then she will move on to a different job, where she can use those skills. Our brother, like our father, is a natural mechanic, and even though he no longer has the job of your typical mechanic, he has found what works for and interests him (and did so before he turned 30.) Meanwhile, I've been unemployed for nearly 2 years now, a chronic job hopper before that, and can't see myself even doing phlebotomy long-term. If I had gone by my abilities from childhood? I'd have probably gone to Vet school. I did threaten to go become a vet tech for a few years, but for whatever reason, never did that.

I think my biggest reasons for this stagnation have been fear of failure and fear of burning out. I'm a perfectionist, so it's a struggle to remember or even believe, that effort is not time wasted, even if you didn't do something as pristinely as you'd imagined. This bleeds into all areas of my life. Making cookies, playing a game, cleaning house, making dinner, even things like screwing up at work in front of the boss. I always feel the need to prove myself, and when I fall short of that, I will remember it for decades after, and continue to berate myself for it- even when I haven't seen whomever may have witnessed my failure in ages, and they likely didn't remember, anyway. For some reason (or combination of them), I never internalized that failure isn't the end of the world, and it's definitely not a good excuse to not finish something. Someone much smarter than I recently told us the story of how many times Thomas Edison failed in his creation of the lightbulb before he got it right. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 970-something I believe. That is a lot of failure. And when someone poopooed his idea, saying "this will never work- it hasn't for the last 970+ tries," Mr. Edison merely told them that now he knows 970 things that won't work. It was more than he'd know if he hadn't even tried. And think about it, if he had let all that non-success get him down? Maybe we wouldn't have electric light, and so many, many other things we enjoy and take for granted now.

All that said, I've decided that 2014 is the year I stop holding myself back. Because really, it's me. Not family, not lack of money, not a dirty house or whatever other hundreds of excuses I could make. So if you're at a point in your life where you're tired of waiting for things to happen- get off your butt. Stop waiting. Make them happen. Things do not normally land in our laps from the sky. And if your life has not been the greatest lately? My sympathies, certainly, my last few years have been on the shitty side, but that doesn't mean that it has to continue (at least not the parts I can influence, any way. Much as I'd like to have the power to prevent death, I don't.) You can give life a steel toed salute to the balls, and make it your bitch this year. I don't do resolutions, but I have vowed to myself that 2014 is going to be as awesome as I am capable of making it. And even if it doesn't work out that way? No one will be able to say I didn't try. So this late bloomer to life is just starting to blossom.