“Waiting is painful.  Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.” ~Paulo Coelho

It’s funny.  I feel like I should write, but I’m not quite sure what to write about.  Sometimes I don’t even know that I’m thinking certain thoughts until they spill out onto the page as I type.  I finished my third 5K today and, to me, that is a pretty big accomplishment.  But still, I don’t know if that is what I want to write about.  I’m at a point where I don’t know if the problem is that I have nothing in my head or everything.

What I do know is that I’m tired of waiting.  But even then, I’m not sure what I’m waiting for.  A sign?  Something that tells me what direction I take at the fork in the road.  I’m always looking for something to tell me which direction to choose or which path to take: a certain time on a clock, finding a heads up penny, even my horoscope at times (ironically enough, my horoscope today tells me that if I have a particular issue on my mind, I shouldn’t wait for a better moment to get it out into the open). I feel like I am always at a “fork in the road”.  Each decision has it’s own set of benefits and consequences and really, you can’t know what they are until you make the decision.  So I spend time debating and agonizing and worrying so much that I create more problems and situations than there actually are.

I think one of my problems is that I don’t take enough risks and tend to not put myself “out there” as much as I could or should.  I tend to play it safe, thinking that if I don’t make a choice or a move either a. someone will make it for me, or b. nothing happens and I am no worse off than I was before.  Plus, what happens if I do put myself out there and it turns out to be the wrong decision or a mistake?  Or even worse, I am somehow rejected?  Sometimes I feel like my fragile ego just won’t be able to handle it.

I tend to write all these posts about how I need to jump in, make grand gestures, simply make choices and decisions, and yet that’s all they are…words on a page.  I don’t actually DO any of that.  I write about doing it, but never take action.  It all sounds so amazing and profound when I write it down and for a while I actually contemplate taking action, real action, within my life.  And then I get scared. And the worst part?  The really worst part?  Is that I am a giant hypocrite.  I tend to judge people for not following through when they complain about the direction of their life and yet I do the same thing.

At what point will I allow myself to make the first phone call, take the first step, or tell someone what I really want instead of going along with someone else’s plans?  At what point will I allow myself to walk away from situations instead of clinging to a hope that maybe, one day, it will get better?  At what point will I just DO SOMETHING instead of standing still?

At what point will I allow myself to jump, knowing that it’s just as likely that I land on my feet unscathed as it is I break my legs?