A New Book

Note: I understand I didn't draw any funny pictures for this topic. It's because it's an actual serious one. Don't worry, the next one will be snarky and full of stupid pictures. 

There's a point in a person's life when things become stale. They're stagnant. It sucks, I know. I've been there, done that. You get so comfortable with your life that you just go with the motions. You get up, go to work, go to the gym/train on your bike, come home, sleep. Do it all over again tomorrow. You're comfortable with your family and friends because you know what to expect. We're creatures of habit. I get it. We like to be able to predict things, though we thrive when we think of ourselves as unpredictable. Go figure, right?

So, we go through the motions. I do, too. I just go with it. I'm comfortable, happy. Why should I change anything? I'm living the Modern Mother-Fuckin' American Dream and I'm doing well. But that's the thing. I wasn't fully happy. Stagnation. It didn't make me happy. The motions were too repetitive and too boring. I needed to do something about it.

I was resentful of my life. In my mind, I was doing everything right. I finished High School with an extremely high GPA, I went to community college, transferred to University, got my degree with a competitive GPA. And then what? I guess Grad School. And I was ready for it. I was ready to jump in. I sent in applications to several places and got accepted to these places, but I wasn't ready for it. I didn't want it. The program in Sacramento wasn't what I wanted (a PsyD) and I didn't want to move to the Bay Area, so then what? I even told people that I didn't get accepted into the Sacramento program because I wanted to avoid the questioning... "What!? Why didn't you accept the program. This is for your future."

But if I'm doing everything right, if I'm doing everything for my future correctly, then why am I so resentful?

I thought about it. I thought about my future a lot. And I kept resenting it. There more I thought about it, the more resentful and angrier I got with it. I was doing everything right. I went through my higher education and I had absolutely nothing to show for it except for some debt I accumulated. I had debt because of my future but no job in my field. So I was supposed to go through more school, a Grad program, and accumulate more debt? Without a guaranteed job? Is that really what I want? Do I want to continue this road of uncertainty?

I didn't know.

When I got the congratulatory e-mail, I remember sitting down and bursting into tears. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what the fuck I wanted. I didn't know if I wanted to keep this horrible road of "I don't know what going to happen when I finish. I don't know if I'll have a job. I don't know what I'm going to do. I. Don't. Know." At that point, my best friend had mentioned the Air Force. Ha. Seriously? The military? While I've always had the curiosity of joining, I never actually thought of it as a possibility. But we were serious, and we went to talk to a recruiter.

The only problem was that the recruiter was never at his office. I submitted an application online and one finally called me, and left me with so many questions that I didn't like it. But the idea of the military was still there, and I thought about it more, and more, and more. The idea never left my head. This was an opportunity for me to continue my educations while I had a guaranteed job, so I wasn't going to give up so easily. One more time, I went to the Air Force office and the recruiters weren't there nor did they answer their phones, so I said, "Fuck this. I'm going to chat with the Navy."

Most of you know how this went.

This career change has been so amazing for me. It's opened up so many opportunities and I'm extremely excited for my career to start. And it opened up my eyes.

I have a lot past resentment. I resent certain events in my life, certain decisions I made, and certain people. It's hard to get rid of past resentment, however, joining the military has started a new chapter in my life. It's a new path. It's not just a new chapter in my book, it's a whole different volume. This is my chance to restart my life. Not many people are that lucky.

In this new insight, I got a moment where I thought, "Fuck all of the people who ever made me feel like shit, who ever hurt me, and who were terrible people to me." And that was it. I was to burn all of those bridges, because I didn't fucking need them. They needed to be gone. I would no longer tolerate their shittiness or anything they did, whether it was in the past, present, or whether they intended to hurt me again. They will not be allowed to be characters in my new book.

So, I started small. I first went on my phone and deleted all the contacts I didn't want. I then went to my social media, mostly Facebook. I have so many contacts on there that I've had to scroll through my friends list several times. My rules for deleting these people were simple:
1) If I hadn't talked to them in more than three months (I think this was generous), they were cut and,
2) If the name on the screen brought up a bad memory, I cut them from my connections.
It's been working wonderfully so far.

It's easy for me since I don't have children, and one of the reasons I don't want children is because of the freedom I have. But it's been my choice for several reasons, and the main one is the freedom; I've been able to drop my whole past, my whole life as I know it, this book I've written in for the past 27 years, and burn it. I can burn the book of the KC that I know, and I'll start a blank, new book. A new book without past resentments, without old stories, old pain... without history. I'm burning those bridges, and with those bridges, is that old book.

I've Moved. The fuck. On.

This is the happiest I've been in a long, long time. I'm refreshed, I'm excited, and the best part, I'm looking forward to my new life.