The Cliff

I've been on this road for awhile now. Trying to live two lives. There's the life that I imagine for myself at some point in the future. There's not a day goes by that doesn't find me thinking about it, picturing what it will be like, longing for it. Then there's the life I actually live. It's good, respectable, and most of the time I actually find myself enjoying it. On some level, I knew that the day would come when I'd have to choose.

Do I chase the awesome but admittedly crazy dream, or do I grow up and settle for an easy, peaceful life?

I've been inching closer for a good portion of my life so far.

And finally, I find myself at the edge of a metaphorical cliff with two options.

I can jump off, knowing that I'll have to fall through all of my deepest fears and way, WAY out of my comfort zone. But if I find that I can fly, the payoff would be huge. I could become all I've always felt I was meant to be.

Or, I can walk away. I'll be safe, comfortable, stable, maybe even moderately happy. But I'll never know whether I ever had a chance at my dream. I'll never know whether I could fly.

I've known the time to make this decision would eventually come ever since I realised that the life I pictured is highly improbable. I've always thought that I would make the brave decision and go for it anyway. And now everything in me is telling me the time to make that commitment is now. But I'm terrified. I know that this is a risk that I need to take, but something keeps pulling me back.

It's the craziest thing to know exactly what you want, and what the next step to getting it is, but being afraid to do it. It's like being paralyzed.

Not that this is something meant to be interesting to read. I just needed to think through some things, and writing is a way for me to do that. Sorry to have wasted your time if you were expecting to read something excellent.

I Wore My Sunglasses at Night

A long-time pet peeve of mine is when people wear sunglasses indoors. Not due to a medical condition or being sensitive to light or recovering from laser eye surgery, or because they have those lenses that automatically shade when you go outside and then take forever to go back to normal. But as a fashion statement. It's not practical, everyone knows it. It just looks bad. Please don't.

And WHAT is with the selection of these already fairly awful frames? It's like they're just designed to be unflattering. You've got the aviators, which make you look like you walked out of your time machine straight from the seventies, ditto the ones with ridiculous day-glo frames that you can buy at the dollar store if you happen to be blessed with good vision. You've got the ones that are so dark they completely block out your eyes and the ones that are so lightly tinted they barely qualify as sunglasses. What's worse is that there doesn't seem to be a nice, medium range. And lest we forget those ones that are so huge they make virtually everybody look bug-eyed (which, much to my bewilderment, most model/actresses don't seem to mind). I bought the least offensive pair I could find at lenscrafters and I still hate the way they look on me.

Don't get me wrong, sunglasses are useful sometimes, and there are a few occasions when I'll go ahead and swap them in. If I'm driving and the sun is in my eyes, if I'm walking out of an afternoon showing of some movie, if I'm on the beach, or in Hawaii (my Canadian eyes are just a little too delecate to handle that much sunlight), or if the sun is reflecting off the snow enough for it to hurt not to squint I won't hesitate to pop them on, but other than that I avoid them like the plague.

So it kind of sucked for me last week, when my regular glasses broke. I tried to make do with an old pair, but it's easier said than done when you have to read the whiteboard to take down notes. So, I wore my sunglasses in a particularly note-filled class one day. I wasn't proud of it then, and I'm not now. I'm pretty sure I blushed for fifty minutes straight that day. I put them away as soon as I got out of class and immediately felt dizzy wearing my old prescription. Having already experienced a good dose of cognitive dissonance from wearing them indoors for almost an hour despite my chagrin when I see other people do it, I decided "What the heck? I already paid for it.". And wore them for the rest of the day. In costco. At the mall. Shopping for a new pair of glasses. Playing with the cat. At 11:00 pm.

It really annoyed my family. Good to know I'm not the only one.