What else is there?

For a few weeks now I've been waking up in a heart-racing panic, wrapped in a sweaty chill. This happens after about 6 hours of teeth grinding and vivid B-movie dreams in saturated 1970s Technicolor and Smell-O-Vision. (I am cursed/blessed with a very active imagination.)

While I sleep, my brain (just like everyone's brains) works on into the night figuring stuff out. It's all that connecting-the-dotting our awake brain doesn't have time to sort out during precious consciousness. It's an attempt to work out all that crap that you "know" but don't know yet. You know? How to survive life with your wits (and sense of humor) still intact.

These things that freak me out range from big OMG! OMG! things to (itty bitty little) things. I see these same things happening to my friends and family, clients and comrades, weighing like rocks in their pockets. The tumultuous economy and pinching pennies, the routine of family life, our personal and professional responsibilities, desire and yearning and ambition, the loves lost and loves wanted, the past mistakes and future wishes. And there's always guilt, too. That is what the soiled trench coat of life is made out of, with its many pockets of many rocks of stuff that weigh us down.

These things aren't altogether bad, however. It's life, and these rocks are part of it. They keep us grounded. They distract us from things that pull our focus away from what we should be doing as productive members of the community, as a business, as someone's partner. They give us boundaries and rules of engagement.

They also lock us into situations, and dictate how we spend the hours we're not pseudo sleeping and acerbating the veneers of our molars. They dash dreams and let the air out of ambition. They tell us "No. You can't, because __________."

That's where I am right now, staring at that fill-in-the-blank. At the really, really good and solid list of reasons why I can't, why I should ditch my heart's desires and secret stealth projects, and concentrate on getting through the roughness of those rocks against my tender skin. Impressively daunting is what it is. The not sleeping, the process of metabolizing the adrenaline of freaking out, and the dirty guilt coat I'm wearing, all of it makes a girl super tired. You know? It's just easier to let things be, and strive for "meh" instead of "whoo-hoo!".

But even though I have these very heavy rocks in my pockets, I still have hope in my veins that I can be and do and have what I want. That I really can dream big and not be devastated because of __________. That someday soon I won't wake up with aching jaws and balmy in places that should not be balmy, tangled in my sheets and head.

In the meantime: I give, I live, I aspire. I work my ass off. I trust that I'll be okay, and that my projects and efforts and words are not wasted. That they are meaningful stepping stones for the believers of such grandiose ideology of personal fulfillment, pointing me in the direction I'm supposed to be going.

After all, what else is there but faith in following your bliss?

Let's go steady!