Hurry up and wait

That seems like what I do....ALL THE TIME. Except, of course, when I wait, and wait, and wait...and then I hurry up because I have to, at deadline times.

I awoke today with a genuine question, almost as if I were outside of me, questioning me.

Why do I insist on stressing myself out and swimming in circles with a series of unrewarding projects, unwanted career path changes, and unfulfilling relationships that hold no chance for real future happiness?

I'm not down on myself, don't get me wrong. I am lucky, because I really am partially where I would like to be, in life. I know, ultimately, what I want and who I should let into my life. I just seem to be taking an awful lot of backsteps and missteps. If I were to examine that carefully, I would say that I have a very strong fear of real success. I have achieved a lot of successes, but I know that I haven't really tried that hard to get there.

The honest truth is that I can easily envision the whats, the wheres, and the whos of fulfilling my life's dreams, but I am afraid to achieve them. Perhaps I'm afraid of what would happen once I got to that point. Would I be disappointed? Disillusioned? I'll probably have already changed direction again by the time that hits. And if I have, would this mean the previous 10+ etc, years would have been a waste?

My father repeatedly told me from a very young age (like, 8 or 9) that I have a "fear of success." I wonder if I subconsciously took that observation to heart more than I should, and consequently lived out my life to reflect that trait. When I give this some thought, I have to say, I think I just accepted it (because my father knows everything!) and fed into it, instead of battling and conquering it.

He couldn't have known it would harm me, for he believed in honesty and I know in my deepest gut that he loved me more than life itself. But it makes me think...if my father had told me (albeit untruthfully) that I had NO fear of success, and that I can and WOULD be able to do anything I ever dreamed of in life, that it was expected of me, and actually put some more pressure on me, maybe I would have subconsciously adopted a different, more confident approach to life.

I remember asking him when I was a very small girl (4 or 5) , in a voice full of awe, hope, and reverence, if he thought *I* would be able to go to college when I grew up, and his answer was that he "hoped so." Now I'm an adult, and I can see what he meant. He meant that he hoped so "if money and opportunity and less beaurocratic red tape allowed him to send me there"...and I heard he hoped so "if I was smart enough." A little something lost in translation, and here I still remember the conversation thirty years later.

Sometimes seeing life in shades of gray, when vocalized (especially in relation to others), can harm those who are close to you. We need a little bit of "black or white" in order to discover our strengths.