stop.

Welcome back to 2am. I, for one, haven’t missed it. Tonight’s movie is Mamma Mia! and tonight’s exhausting intrusive thought is “what have I done?” 

Here’s an update on my life, for those of you who need it: This week, by my own free will, I left the hospitality industry behind and today I embarked on a new journey of… nothing. I’m not going back to school, I’m not working anywhere, and I don’t have any job prospects. And it’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.

As I’ve been telling people about my resignation over the last two weeks, the only question people have asked is, “where are you going from here?” And the only answer I give is, “nowhere.” And then, sometimes, I explain more: I’m taking time to reset, to look for work in my field of study. Bartending burnt me out, and I just needed to stop doing it. And so I did, and now for the first time since high school I actually have time off.

But, as is usually the case when I start blogging in the middle of the night, I’m not so okay with that. It’s hard to just stop. Since I can remember I have been telling myself that I need to be doing more, not less. I have always believed that I need to be out there working as hard as I can to make myself known, and it’s counterintuitive to achieve that by quitting my job. It’s challenging to see my brilliant talented friends moving forward in their careers while I just hit the brakes. I’m already anxious about explaining the gap in my resumé to potential employers, about getting my momentum back when I do start working again.

But here I am, no safety nets, no turning back. I do not have the option to chicken out anymore. As of today, my full time job is looking for a full time job. And it’s also eating right and sleeping at regular hours and going outside more and being kinder to myself and to other people. Who knows what this next month or so is going to look like, or what’s going to happen on the other side? Does it matter? Probably. I’ll figure it out then. For a minute, I’m just going to do nothing.

The song I’ve been singing to myself for months is “Run, Run, Run” by Joel Plaskett. It includes the lyrics “if you walk, you’ll rust” and I have made no effort to hide that that has haunted me in the past (x). Continuing to sing that is unfair to myself, because for the time being I’m not even walking, so in a completely uncool but self-motivational way I’m going to leave myself with a new Plaskett song. Take a listen: