Hiatus is a Cruel Word, but the Clarity is Palatable

To my small and loyal following, I'm sorry I have kept you hanging. I had to focus for a while on my other dream for a while, the one that at least in the short term allows me to eat well and pay rising tuition for a school/degree that will actually land me a job when I finish. This reminds me of the nagging conversation I had with myself the other day. Ever seen the show 'Lizzie McGuire'? Imagine something like that:

Cartoon Me: Wasn't this the semester you were going to take a break, work to pay for summer school, and reassess your life, change your major to business, and go work on a start up with your best friend?

Physical Me: Yes...?

Cartoon Me: Then why haven't you done so? Why have you instead worked a job you hated and resigned yourself to a course that keeps beating you down to within an inch of your sanity?

Physical Me: Chillax dude, I got this under control.

There is little in this world more devastating to my pride than the moment I discovered that the world was indeed very fair and that I just sucked. I didn't see it when my classmates would magically seem to understand things that I didn't, I just tried to push myself along doing course work until I was blue in the face and crying myself to sleep at night because I couldn't make any sense of it. I fell flat on my face doing this, spending Christmas as a classic wreck. I didn't sleep, I ate my  feelings, and I wanted to so desperately punch some anthropomorphic representation of the concepts that were keeping me down.

Luckily I got to work this spring, and now as I near the end not a step closer to my goal of becoming a famous author I can't help but feel... accomplished. I have had a chance to look back at myself and to finally breathe, allowing myself to look at the bigger picture and find a place to stand up. I've heard that it's not how many times you get punched in the face that matter, but how many times you get punched in the face and keep on hitting back.

It hurts, it stings like hell, and pain after all is the body's way of saying that something is wrong. But if you give yourself time to breathe and forget the panic of the moment, eventually you loose the ability to feel the punches. You just keep walking on the path you are on, not knowing if you are going home or walking off the edge of a cliff. And that's the fun part.

If nothing else, achieving a higher endurance will have been worth the semester off. Luckily for me this also allowed me to find parts of my day job I really enjoyed and to earn enough to fix what I broke. And maybe, just maybe, I will find something deep down that helps me write the next great American novel.