The Mid-2016 Freak Out

I think I'm having an existential crisis mixed with a quarter-life crisis, culminating in a Top 10 Freak Out for my life. Freak out number one occurred when I was but a young girl in Fred's with my mom. She wouldn't buy me some fruity gum, which is all I asked for on this particular trip. I grabbed it in my small right hand and walked out with it after she paid for everything else. My mom found it in the parking lot after smelling my strawberry-laced breath and made me walk back into the store, return the un-chewed portion, and apologize to the manager. Cue the freak out.

My latest freak out was prolonged over the entirety of 2015, starting when I quit my job at La Rabida, worked at an overly demanding consulting firm for barely six months, joined Teach for America even though I knew eastern Kentucky wasn't for me, unprepared-ly taught unsuspecting high school students, shaved my entire head, and then quit two days before my 26th birthday. All of this brings me here, to June 2016, three months post-teaching.

I don't regret quitting TFA - I regret ever accepting the offer. I regret saying "yes" to working in a place I didn't want to live for an unknown salary at a school that hadn't hired me yet for a job I would only receive four weeks of training for (in the incorrect grade level and a different subject than the one I would actually teach). I do regret leaving my students mid-year - they deserved better.

Now, I'm in a city that I've always wanted to live in, but working a job that (thank you Mother Mary) pays the bills; however, it isn't a good fit for me and under utilizes the skills that I do have. I have thus arrived at the frantic conclusion that I have no idea what I'm doing. What have I accomplished? I decided to start a literary company (Harpo, where dat come from?), and I was writing my "about me" bio section on my preliminary website. Welcome to the Great Flailing, Failing Freak Out of Mid-2016.

"Marilyn Williams has been semi-successful in several odd, non-congruous things since graduating from college. She has been most successful at trying, and later quitting, things and now can't even decide what ice cream flavor she wants to eat because she no longer trusts herself to make decisions." 

I feel at once overwhelmed by options and strangled by the day-to-day of my life, as if this is all there is and I'll never be great at anything. What are my skills? What do I contribute to life? I spend most of my day as a consumer, but I want to create something great. Should I indeed start a company? Go to grad school? Open a bookstore? Publish a novel? Train for some marathon? Volunteer in some exotic locale and come back with a thousand pictures of palm trees and brown children that no one wants to see?

If I were to die today - apparently I'm very morbid in this freak out - what would my epitaph say? I'd want it to say:

"Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother, Heroine. She learned, she taught, she loved, and she tried. She was a champion for animals, a voice for our planet, a student of history, a progressive writer, and a worthy keeper of knowledge. Thy will be done."

Or something to that tune. It'll need to be a really big headstone and I'll need to start making bank and get some life insurance to pay for all that lettering, but I digress.

What am I doing to get me to that headstone now and, more importantly, what can I start doing?

When you write a good story, you're supposed to already know how it ends. You're supposed to know what happens to your characters and how; but not just how, why. The Magdalene hasn't explained that much to me, but at least I have a vague idea of where I want to wind up. If the journey is supposed to be half the fun, why aren't I enjoying this long period of uncertainty more?

Has this been the beginning of a new freak out in my life, or am I still reeling from the great 2015 "what the poop am I doing/have I done with my life" mess that was the first five months of the year in Chicago and all of my TFA experience?

Am I working toward a master's degree or a PhD in classics or art history? Am I reaching for a physical/athletic goal? Have I learned to read music and picked up the violin again? Am I writing daily to work toward completing a book? Am I reading daily to expand my horizons? What am I doing with my life?

Here's some sister-fun time to remind myself that if nothing else, I have faith and family. Eventually, I suppose I'll get me, myself, and I together as well.