The Science of Midlife Crises Rockets

This week, someone called me a “writer”, just said it in a sentence, like it was a fact. The conversation continued swiftly on, but that word, “writer”, just hung there in the room, foreign and intimidating. I couldn’t avoid it. “Are you going to take me in? Are you going to push me aside? Throw me away?  Absorb me?”  I decided to put it in my pocket and take it home, to be placed in a drawer for later. I’ve set it there, alongside my rocket science notes, molecular engineering research, Solve Mysteries of the Universe Handbook, that scribbled note from 1993 I can’t quite decipher, some spare change and the instructions on How to Make the Perfect Souffle. Am I a writer? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think I am just a girl. And, I don’t really know what that means either, to be just a girl . I’m hoping to find out.

So, I guess this is my journey… 

Space Shuttle Endeavour lifts-off from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla.  .  John Raoux/AP

• It’s not about what I know or how great I am
• It’s about how I don’t know anything and I’m not great at all.
• It’s about how I make a LOT of mistakes. So, so many.
• It’s about how I don’t know what I’m doing.
• It’s about fear and wondering and failing and going on.
• It’s about messing up and not knowing what to do next.
• It’s about falling down. It’s about getting up.
• It’s about how I had Tootsie Rolls for breakfast, but my microwave is clean.
• It’s about how I say things like “anything” and "everything" and “never” and “always”, but I really shouldn’t, because they aren’t usually accurate or fair.
• It’s about self-esteem and lack of it.
• It’s about how I didn’t brush my hair today and my mom would be so distraught about that. It’s about how I have, historically, rarely brushed my hair and my mom has always been so distraught about that.
• It’s about how I don’t know anything about photography, but I used to carry my camera and take pictures anyway.
• It’s about what I’ve forgotten and what I never knew. It’s about remembering and learning.
• It’s about having gotten so wrapped up in life that I forgot to live.
• It’s about not knowing.
• It’s about doing.
• It’s about trying.
• It’s about being. Fully present, aware
• It’s about truth and being scared.
• It is risk and permission to fail.

It is Rocket Science 101.

Because  life is funny.

In a what the Hell is in my drink kind of way.

(Seriously, man, is that a finger?)

----------------------------------------------------Welcome to my mid life crisis.

this post is about letting go of perfectionism, because I didn’t have time to edit it. weee