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

Beef and Broccoli and the Need to Not Care

Last Saturday a mentor of mine took me out to lunch at Panda Express. I don't know if you have a Panda Express where you live, but it is simply delish! Whenever I go, I get the chicken and string beans, beef and broccoli, and lo mein. I mean really, it's magical!
The Panda Express near my house is always busy. Any given day at any given time, the line can go back as far as the front door. Of course, this is usually because of the morons that have eleven orders, or the idiots who don't know what they want and have to sample everything on the food line. Just so you know, grilled chicken with teriyaki sauce tastes exactly like what it is advertised to be: grilled chicken with teriyaki sauce!
Last Saturday was particularly brutal. Add on crying babies, kids who want to give their own orders, and lovers that are too busy loving each other to pay for their meals in a timely manner and you have a snapshot of the lunch rush. Yet, even after all those people were gone, I was still standing there 20 minutes later like a lost soul, waiting for my beef with broccoli. I watched the young woman making my order call back a need for beef with broccoli about five times to the cook, who was a young, sexy dude with a strong back that I could see through his cotton uniform shirt. As fit as he looked, he was moving at a snail's pace, stopping occasionally to wipe sweat from his brow or pop a nibble in his mouth. The other customers were getting a little antsy, but I recognized is attitude and felt a mix of nostalgia and pride. This young man simply did not care if we got our food or not.
There is something quite beautiful and admirable about not caring, especially when you are a fine 20-something that could get it, licking your lips as you casually nearly let a pan of fried rice burn. The last time I didn't care I was a teen. I hated my job at a very ghetto KFC/Pizza Hut. I made side items and biscuits. I was also tasked with cleaning the lobby which was a complete nightmare, wiping up the soda spills and chicken crumbs of GROWN customers. My boss liked to play this game called Let's Not Schedule Anyone To Relieve Holly where he would try to keep me on the schedule for 12 hours at 15-years-old. One day I was told that if I left, I was quitting. And with no problem, I grabbed a personal pan pizza and left. I just didn't care.
Now I care about everything. My debt, my health, my life in general. And all this caring just equals to worry. Not caring equals bravery. When you don't care, the sky is the limit because you can't see how far you can fall. I'm scared to fall in the shower. Scared to fall going down steps. And I most certainly am scared to fall in life...AGAIN. I don't think I'd have the wherewithal to get up. They say it's hard out here for a pimp. Imagine how hard it is for a fat girl with no health insurance that got canned from a daycare.
Me, much like my beef with broccoli, am a little salty. And I am trying to get over this hump as to finally make it in life, to finally get a job. If I wasn't so scared of open flames and standing for 8 hours, I would try to get on at Panda Express.