I need to make some changes. Big changes. I don't know what, yet, exactly. My job, for one. I don't want to seem ungrateful. It does what jobs are supposed to do. It pays the bills, it has good benefits, it allows me to buy food and shelter; but it also holds me back in so many ways. Or at least, it provides me with an excuse to hold myself back, behind which I can hide my paralyzing fear of taking risks, of putting myself out there and reaching for the brass ring.

Lately I've come to the realization that not only am I not where I expected to be by now, but I'm also not headed in the direction that I want to go. Part of it is that I've lost focus. Part of it also is that in recent years I've discovered new passions, affinities and interests to add to the old. I want to explore these.

I want to do so many things. I want to be so many things. I want to be a novelist, and a playwright. I want to be a filmmaker. I want to be a photographer and a graphics designer. I want to be a web developer. I want to freelance full time. I want to travel. I want to be part of a romance. I want to live in a major city. I want to live in a different country. I want to get out of Oklahoma, even if it's only for a short while.

I want to be someone who takes risks, who does what needs to be done to accomplish these things.

I don't want to be a secretary who spends most of her evenings on the couch watching TV because she's too exhausted to do anything else; but that is what I am.

Have you ever been at a place where you hate every single thing about your life, and you feel stuck because you don't know what to do to change it? That's where I am right now.

Something is going to have to change.