24/34

The other day, I flipped back some pages in my journal and began reading passages from when I was 24. You would have thought that I had written those entries yesterday because my complaints about money, graduate school, and not knowing what I was going to do with my life read all too current. We are talking 10 years! How do I still have the same fears and anxieties?
My mentor recently told me that I need to "take the first step" with a lot of things in my life. She is so right. There are so many things that I have not started or accomplished out of fear of failure, so I don't even try. But this has to change. I don't want to go into middle age still debating on whether or not I want to retake the GRE or move out of Atlanta.
I have discovered that after my first big failure in my 20s, it has been increasingly more difficult for me to make decisions, not hat it was easy for me back then. I do recall moving through life with relatively more ease. But that just may have been because I was young, and not as aware as I am now that one wrong move could send me spiraling downwards and backward on the path of my life. I'm not old, but I am too old to make young mistakes. Just as with my joints, my rebound time from taking a hit has slowed significantly. That's why admire these young Instagram entrepreneurs that have put their last into a weave business and they are now millionaires. If I put my last into anything, the odds are too high that, if it goes south, I will spend the next ten years eating out of a tin can.
As true as this may be, I don't want to waste time making excuses. I want to do as my mentor advised and "take the first step". So I am currently working on a play, something I have always wanted to do. But I'm not as naive as I was when I was 5, watching a video of the play Purlie Victorious with my grandmother. I am very aware that my attempt at local theater flops, my career will take a Mike Tyson level hit that it may take me forever to recoup from. But you can't live in fear, right? So onward I go, working on my play. Hopefully, my 44-year-old entries will be written from a place of success and wealth. #positivethinking