This poor, abandoned blog is (yet another) victim of my “paralysis by analysis”.

And it’s a problem.

My need for everything to be PERFECT, for the BEST choices to be made, and for “mistakes” to become as foreign as Swahili, has translated in to combined hours (Hooooours) of pontification: “which shoe”, “which earrings”, “which shade of pink”… “an extra run, or a needed nap”, “live a little, or stay strong”, “buy it, or save”, “now or later”, “MBA or art school”…. and it continues.

And when these things arise, and I’m all tangled up in my, “I-just-don’t-know-what-to-do’s”, I kinda freeze. Shut down. Cry. (Rinse and repeat.)

You know the friend you were supposed to call back, but didn’t. And then let too much time pass, so now you can’t. Unless you think of some REALLY good excuse… or hold out for a catastrophic tragedy, by which you’ve been so devastated she CAN’T be mad (per Universal Laws of Friendship). That friendship soon becomes invisible; veiled in a thin sheet of guilt that’s easier to ignore than to confront.

This blog became like that friend. That thing I just “waited too long” to address. The next point of contact, I felt, needed to be some sort of Pulitzer worthy summation of life, religion, foreign policy AND world peace. And since I couldn’t make that happen I just… stayed still.

This same psychology has permeated to other facets of my life…

After my job was swept away in the undertow of this horrible economy, I fell into a sort of melancholy slump. Realizing that somewhere along the way I began to identify myself by my job, assess my value by my corporate role, and determine my worth by my potential earnings, only pushed me to greater depths of disappointment and stagnation.

I worked fervently to find another job and thus renew my status in the world, but when that didn’t happen I found myself asking: “What’s my excuse for me?” And I soon began to echo childhood dad-isms “Who do you think you are? You don’t count. You’re nothing.” The strength of my heart, my joy, my idealism had all been reduced to quiet whimpers reminiscent of a pre-college me.

All of this has mixed together to create some sort of emotional concrete. I have been so stuck in recounting the missteps of my race and flipping back through the pages of my “Choose Your Own Adventure” to see where my story would be if I had just picked another way. And while I already know how excruciatingly unproductive these exercises can be, I just couldn’t pull myself out of the mire. I’ve spend so many lonely days, just trying to rally.

And now I find myself at another crossroads.

Because I get it.

I see what has happened and understand that I’ve wasted months of my life in this dark little place, desperately hoping for a lifeline out.

And as I struggle with needing to be authentic, but wanting so badly to be perfect, I have a choice: I can re-enter the world on my own, without a job, or a house, or a family, or a nice car, or an “excuse” …or any of the those things I’ve always thought would make me “count”. I can live feeling a bit less worthy and uncomfortably flawed OR I can stay in my familiar cocoon of sadness until I’m ready to debut unrivaled wings. The problem is that, I know me. I will continue to scrutinize and analyze and find more things that aren’t perfect yet… and I’ll never get out.

So, THIS imperfect entry is my jumping off point… whether it goes unnoticed or is silently critiqued, at least I know I got unstuck.

Still searching for the perfect pink.