Beholden to whom?

Blogland exposes souls some days. Today is one of them. I empathise with anyone's blind panic and indecision, or worse, realising a decision is required but failing to extract the options. The vastness of choice available to us, to anyone, would make Jane Austen spin ribbons in her grave but the pressure to have the experience, to provide what is expected, to pay the money for the moment fills me with dread and not a little bit of anger.*

I think everyone goes through moments of meandering through their own disasters. Or negotiating their own pebbley beach. I'm going through a seachange shift in life, attempting to ignore the guaranteed money I could get in the city tomorrow, turn my shoulder, if not my whole back, on a corner of an industry I love because its inhabitants turn their backs on me, and negotiate a whole new life for which I shall be paid too little, challenged too infrequently and compare mine to other lives to be lived too often.I think it is very easy to pile pressure upon pressure and the threat that today is your last day can paralyse you with a fear that you achieve nothing.

I'm going for baby steps. This time last year I embarked on four months of learning Italian. In eleven months I will be climbing the Inca trail. In four months I will submit the second dissertation of my educated life. In three years my Boy will be a GP and we'll have to form a life somewhere that is not here. If I think about too much more, I will explode.

I shiver in twilight for souks to be explored and cities to be learned like I have learned London. I want to watch the sunrise and the sunset on two different coasts in one day. I want a wedding and children and a postgraduate certificate and a job and a career and a cath ashley home. I have to trust myself that something will happen in time because if I don't believe that, I will crumble. Sentence removed*

I hope that you, gentle reader, will give me time to embark upon anything and not make each day my last. I've got too much to achieve and too many more things to give for my end to happen at me.

*I was moved to comment on Toast & Honey's post last night and reiterate my comment here. I have edited the above to remove potentially misconstrued sentences that did not mean to, but implied, a reference to Olivia's private ponderings. The written word is a fragile beast. One person's thoughts erupt a wholly unforseen chase through another's associations. I've been reading Weddingbee alot recently and sit agog at the screen at the fears that the expectations of brides' families will be dashed if they do not spend x amount on favours, candles, dollar dances and more. This somehow got wrapped up in my words and thoughts of expectation, fulfillment and requirement that echoed with Olivia's.

I admire Toast & Honey's prose style greatly. Her words seem to dash off the screen (Inearly typed page) in an urgency that hints of raw emotion. That was the image I intended to convey using the language that I did. I hope my post did not agitate further.

xx