Wordy Wednesday: Inside the Mind of the Anxious Professional

Hey everyone. I was doing some computer cleanup this afternoon when I came across something I wrote a couple years ago. I'd say it was a bit of character study for the novel I'm writing...but I'm not writing a novel. This is just a peek inside the head of a very, very anxious young woman. Luckily, I've come a long way since those days. Still, it's interesting to look back to a time in my life when I was completely overwhelmed by the simplest choices, and the mere prospect of "success."

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Yes, of course she wants to be happy (she's not insane), but she’d like to do it on her own terms. Yes, she wants to be happy – but not enough to think-up new dreams; she’d rather see her old dreams come true. She wants to be right, and if she thinks-up new dreams, that’s like admitting her first ones were wrong. It must be a little bit more important to her to be right than happy. But it doesn't look like she ever will be right, at least not about this. So there's a very good chance that she will never be happy.

She's not good at making plans; she's too inflexible. Other people, they go with the flow – they make a plan and if something interrupts them, they digest it. Not our girl. She comes up with amazing plans – way better than yours. The problem, though, is that like all plans best-laid, they are not destined to come true. They are simply plans.

She's very bad at improvising. Which is funny, because she's actually a great improviser. Oh my God you should've seen her with her college group – it was insane! It was like they had one mind! Sometimes all four of them would make the exact same joke at the exact same time and the audience would scream and cry and yell and the four of them would stand and look at each other in amazement. But that doesn't happen anymore. She's a big girl now, in the Big Girl World, and she can't seem to find her footing.

Her friends who tumble along without too much ambition are doing great. She has so many girlfriends who are so wonderfully happy, and she's thrilled for them – really! She just wants their secrets. She wants to know how to glide through life with no expectations.

She’s a walking wind-up toy, and she’s full of plans. Specific plans.