Stuck

I've kept a personal blog since I was 15 or 16 and I always updated it regularly. It started out as fun stories and silly things and morphed into a way to track the life changes I went through and the person I'm becoming.

And here I am.

I haven't posted in a month.

I was glad to watch 2013 end. For all the wonderful things that happened last year, I got my fair share of terrible. I grew, I changed, I learned, I moved on. At least, I tried to.

The problem with moving on is that it's not always easy to walk away. I hung on to a personally devastating job situation for way too long because I wanted it to work and I wanted to be that person. There was carnage. I'm still burned out. My old horse will never be the same again. I've had to spend some serious time working on my relationships with people around me who I care about.

Part of me is so ready for this year. I want to see what comes. I want to live and learn and grow and change.

The other part of me isn't ready to move on. I'm tired and I'm worried and I don't like change.

There is no clean, neat ending.

It's just life. And it's not easy.

Doing Hard Things

I'm bad at emotions. To anyone who knows me, that's not really a surprise. I am a doer and fixer and worker, but when it comes to processing all that touchy-feely-weird crap, I really have no idea what to do. Most of the time, that's ok. I tend to only invest emotions into situations I care deeply about, and those are few and far between.

The past year and a half has been an exercise in processing emotions for me.

After a horrific trip to California last year, I realized I need to start all over in order to be the person I want to be. I had to address basic character deficiencies and learn to be strong enough to take the life I wanted. It was a humbling and wrenching experience, but I am thankful for it. I've come out stronger than I was before and happier with who I am as a person.

I'm finding myself in another difficult situation.

I've made the best decisions I can with the information I have at hand. I am confident that the decisions are in the best interests of everyone involved. I know that people I greatly respect and admire look down on me for those decisions.

And so again, I am dealing with those pesky emotions. I don't have a long road trip through Nevada to just sit and think things through, so I am forcing myself to use the time I have to directly address the issue. In order to move forward as a healthy, functioning adult, I have to determine why I feel this way and what I can do to change it or otherwise live with it.

I refuse to be emotionally crippled through the actions of people I cannot control. Instead, I am working backwards through the different threads of emotion and sorting out the tangle into something manageable. It doesn't come naturally to me and it isn't a pleasant process. I have to say things that I know are completely irrational, but accept them because they express an emotion that I'd rather not feel. I have to say "I blame X for this," even when I rationally know that it isn't X's fault.

I can't lie and say it's fun. Character building is the pits, no two ways about it. I will say that I know that once I'm through to the other side, I will again be a happier and stronger person, that much closer to the person that I want to be.