One of, if not my biggest issue over these past 3 years since leaving the safe confines of college, has undoubtedly been my lack of focus.  Initially it came as a shock to me in the few months since graduating college but it has now become a very serious part of my life and it has taken on a mind of its own: it has become a personality trait.  I, as a person on this very day in the month of March, am extremely out of focus in terms of my goals in life and in the everyday…down to the most mundane task.  Working as a server, for the hours that I am at work, is the only time I am able to focus but even then I am disconnected.  I try so hard.  While at work my brain wonders to a continuous question that is and has been on repeat for the past 3 years: What the fuck am I doing? Says my mind to myself.

Mind: Taryn!  Fucking focus on what is important, which is where you are going in life.  What the fuck is wrong with you?  Go home, sit down and write that screenplay you always wanted to write.  Start your memoirs, write a few jokes.  Give it all a chance.  You are fucking awesome.

Myself: I know, I will.

And the vicious cycle continues.  I don’t sit and do it.  I can do it.  But I don’t.  But now I am trying a different method: I am pushing myself to.  I have to.  I find time is slipping away and my deepest fears creep closer to reality with each passing day—what if I don’t accomplish my goals, my dreams? What if I end up as nothing?  I will pay myself one compliment and it is something that can never be taken away from me, even if everything else goes to shit: I am very intelligent.  My intelligence and my excelling in school is the one thing in my life that I always felt I had everyone beat.  Fuck being pretty, being funny, having a great personality—I have always been at the top when it comes to my intelligence.  I have always defined myself by it.  But now I feel it has slipped away and over these past 3 years I have lost myself.

Lost myself.

I have finally figured out why—my brain is dying.  I am trying desperately now to save it.  Insecurity of the self has accrued over the years and that is my main problem.  I find myself getting dumber by the day.  It’s not me, not me at all.  No one that I know now, since graduating from college, knows the real me.  I know that life is fluid; our selves are constantly changing and we are constantly in flux but I believe, deep down to my core, that there are large pieces of the self that remain intact despite the years, the experiences, and the changes.  I believe there is both the constant self and the changing self.  My struggle now is finding the balance, perhaps taking a step back in order to go forward, which is exactly what I am now doing.  Notice I didn’t say trying.

Focus has now become a necessity: it is no longer a luxury for me.  With each passing day I intend to work on my focus, which is something I’m not used to having to work on as it came naturally.  I wonder if the chaos of life after college or life, as I like to call it, breeds lack of focus-ness to all if not most.  Deep down I know I am not alone.

Day by day.

“Are you reeling in the years? Stowing away the time? Are you gatherin up the tears? Have you had enough of mine?” ~Steely Dan

Taryn

XO