I don't know if you read January 1- a lot of knitters do, though I only started reading it recently- but she told her story today about leaving grad school and the panic and anxiety and being a perfectionist and feeling sick all the time and it was all so familiar and so RIGHT ON THE MARK that I felt that feeling in the pit of my stomach all over again.
It's been nearly 3 years since I left. I haven't moved on as quickly as I'd like in some ways and in other ways I'm progressing so fast. I really didn't know what the hell I was going to do, and while I'm still working in science, I've got a JOB that I can forget about when I leave at the end of the day (and sometimes even during the day) and a Fantastic Boss who knows the score and is glad to have me work for him for as long as I wish. I've taken a few classes, learned to paint, designed a few graphic-type thingies and been paid for them. I've painted sets and even won awards. I know it's only the beginning. I've got good feelings about the year to come.
I'm so glad Cara decided to share her story. It was so similar, except that she showed amazing maturity at 22 and stopped it THEN rather than at 29 with 7 years of torture under her belt. I don't know how to explain the sense of deja vu... it was like she was saying things from out of my memories. And it was good to remember, to take stock of where I am now compared to then. It was good, too, to know, even now that I'm through the whole ordeal, that someone else out there knows how terrifying, and yet how absolutely, undeniably necessary the choice was.
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See? None of us are alone even though we all feel alone when we're going through it. I may have found a little bit of wisdom when I was 22 - actually 23 and it took me a few years to get over all of it - but I'm still a work in progress. And I still mess myself up plenty. I just came out of a two yr funk where I tortured myself - literally. Life's always throwing crap at us. Dodge and weave. We all go at our own pace.
It always makes me say, "hmmmmmm" when teachers and parents expect people who are literally children to choose a career and head down a path for the rest of their lives. I don't think I completely knew myself until nearly 30ish, and even then and now it's a process of discovery. I'm glad you mostly stopped torturing yourself =) I liked Cara's story, too, and it seems to have really helped many people
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