Summer Panic

It is mini-Friday at work and as per usual, I am wishing I were just about anywhere but here.

I'm beginning to panic about summer. Because well, it's already the end of July and I feel like it hasn't begun. Then I start thinking about how autumn is just around the corner, and while I really like autumn, I do not like the not-so-subtle reminder that winter is on it's way.

I am the world's worst planner when it comes to my personal life. For some reason, the idea of making plans for the future, of any kind, even the fun kind, like vacation plans, practically has me breaking out in a sweat. I think it's because of my inability to make decisions. Anxiety takes over the decision-making process, every time. Every decision I'm faced with becomes life or death. What if I make the wrong decision? Take a different route home and get stuck in traffic? Order something unfamiliar from the drive-thru and not like it? Make vacation plans and then something better comes along? Such trivial things but decisions, big and small, leave me feeling trapped. In my own little bubble of course.

Life is passing me by. I know this. I feel it in my bones. Yet, I haven't been able to make a change. I was discussing my ambivalence with a friend last week, and she asked when the last time was that I was absolutely sure about something. And sure enough to do something about it. To act on it. Moved to take action. And I realized it was seven years ago when I knew it was time for me to leave the small town I had called home for seven years. It was like somebody had just flipped a switch in my brain, or like the light finally came on. Everything clicked at once. I was finished university. I was finished the short-term contract job I had been working. There was still the matter of a relationship that was going nowhere, but my sudden urge to leave town eventually took care of that. I just knew that I had to get out. Unfortunately, this sudden clarity only had negative consequences, but still, I want that clarity back. I left town, I met somebody new, and I started over. And everything fell into place so easily, like the universe was telling me, "yes, finally, you have done something right. This was how it was meant to be." And then the universe gave me the finger, and said, "what are you stupid? i was kidding."