Hometown Blues

So lately there has been a lot of talk about me staying in Fort Wayne to work on my professional career. 

And just by being who I am, this is not going to happen. 

My life may not turn out exactly the way I envisioned it, and I may not end up exactly where I thought I would, but so long as I have the experiences that I have such a passion for, I don't need everything to work out on the numbered timeline of my brain. 

I grew up in a big, small town, and it was great. I met a lot of great, lifelong friends. But there comes a time in everyone's life where they have to let go of something so comfortable and move to something much more unknown. 

I loved going to high school in a small town, even going to college in a small town. In fact, someday I hope to raise my children in a small town. But I am at none of these points in my life, and the town I find myself in, is suffocating me. 

I want so badly for the people who have supported me my entire life to see that I am meant for more than the opportunity of a town. 

I need city lights and the constant sound of trains to sleep now, not the cricket outside my window. I need mountains of papers on my desk every morning and people reporting to me 24/7 to feel of use. So if I don't have these things, I simply feel useless, and really...whats the use in that?

It grows difficult to stay calm and carry on when I am being told to settle. 

Having an air of elite thinking and positive thought provokes me to not only reach for the moon, but to capture it. 

My parents used to tell me when I was young that I could do anything I wanted, and be whomever I wanted to be if I set my mind to it. And amongst a couple months of harsh realities and significant disappointment, I stare at an unmistakable pity, one only conjured up by myself. But I now hear "find the diamond in the rough" in comparison to the long gone, "you can do anything" speech, and it makes me even more ambitious.

If I don't have ambition now, and put it to good use, when will I? We all have a dream of how our lives are going to play out, some people get it, some don't. But with everything I am I have learned to never dismiss the possibility that even if everything doesn't go as planned, that you can still have that dream if you believe enough in the reality of it.

So now I look around, at a disarray of cornfields and meadows so perfectly strewn out on the leveled and flat land of my hometown as I determine what it is that truly suffocates me. A loving family, fantastic friends, and security was never the issue. 

It was the comfort I found in familiarity.

A quick beating heart and small impositions follow times of change, but that is what I love about it. Its new, and exciting. 

The broad scope of possibility that lies beyond the realm of comfort is intriguing and inviting.

So it's true, I have the Hometown Blues

 But more than that, I get up everyday and I move with a feeling of going nowhere. A feeling that is continuously driving my ambition. A feeling that ultimately will be my key to success

The Best way to Predict the Future, is to Create it.

It's no lie to say that this has been one of the hardest months of my life. 

So many disappointments, so much uncertainty. 

I have put everything I am, and everything I have into being the best version of myself that I can be. I have relied on my unique drive and highest ambitions to drive me from interview to interview. I have let a hunger for success overcome me. I let my desires get the best of me, to the point where I was running on not only the fumes of life, but of gas to my most recent interview. 

When you are in college you think that if you take a couple classes, get the right grades, associate with the right people, and build the perfect resume, that you will be home-free. This is simply not the case, and its a harsh reality, but its a necessary one. Of course we should all work hard in our education. Make the money worth it. But, it doesn't mean you'll get everything, and it certainly doesn't guarantee you anything. You walk across the stage and receive a piece of paper that promises you brighter tomorrows, and more sleep at night.

This must sound negative. The epitome of a bitter college graduate, but I have only begun.

You see there are times in our lives when all we want to do is believe that the windshield in front of us is fogged up for no reason, that all together it was meant for us to get in an accident. The fact is, that the windshield is fogged up because of a chemical reaction that isn't necessarily a direct result of an action done right or wrong by us. Sometimes the rug is pulled from underneath us, and all we want to do is fall wondering why this is happening to us. We hit the ground with intensity, and it hurts, sometimes for just a second, but many times for long, drawn out periods. 

Its easier to believe that sitting there on the ground will help us feel better, that by not moving and drowning in pity will ease the pain that we so vehemently feel.

The tears you let escape consume you, and make you believe you cannot move forward. Single tears will be shed and for a moment you will feel relief. Once that moment passes, you have a chance, to either stand on your feet or fall back to the ground. Sometimes, you are knocked back down,

 I know I was.

Every time I found something to look forward to, something that generated feelings of acceptance and anticipation, it was ripped away from me, eventually I lost my power, I lost my struggle, I lost my motivation.

When you lose sight of your dreams, even ambition cannot save you.

My dreams came back, in the most abstract sense. I found my relief in something other than physical opportunity, I found it in mental revelation. So many things, people, and events had succeeded in disappointing me, that I didn't know how to defog my window. 

But, I learned this, that I have to believe in something, and it has to be in more than "everything happens for a reason". 

I have to believe that I am destined for bigger things, that I am meant for more than what I was settling for. I had to believe that God meant for me to experience this pain as a form of revelation to determine where my next steps were. 

So now, I look to the future, with no idea where I am supposed to go. I know one thing though, its going to be hard, its not going to be my everyday comfort, and finally,

I am going to create it.