Girl in a Hurry

I've always been in a rush. Have you ever heard the Billy Joel song "Vienna"? Here are a few excerpts:

Slow down, you crazy child
you're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart, tell me
Why are you still so afraid? ...

Slow down, you're doing fine
You can't be everything you want to be
Before your time
Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight 

Too bad but it's the life you lead
you're so ahead of yourself that you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you're wrong, you know
You can't always see when you're right, you're right

That song could have been written about me. I've been in a hurry since the day I was born, it seems. I walked early, read early, graduated college in three years. I had my first national magazine cover story at 22 and bought my first house at 25. I've always had my eye on what's next, so much so that I often neglected to enjoy what I had already accomplished. I was too focused on the next promotion, the next job, the next house. Until it all fell apart and I was forced to take a big step backward instead of racing forward.

For the first time ever, I've had to live in the moment because the future is totally up in the air. I can't move out of this house until the divorce papers are filed (because exH moved to another state when we split, one of us has to be living here to file) and right now, I don't even know if I will be able to buy a new place or rent. (We're waiting on the bank to decide whether to let me off the mortgage.) I don't know where Lulu will go to school next year. I can't put in the extra hours at work right now to make the case for a promotion. Things with P are too new (and he is too ... whatever) for a future to be anything more than a fleeting glimpse of sunlight through a heavy fog of uncertainty.

I have no idea where I will be this time next year or the year after. Heck, even next month is a little iffy. Certainly a year ago, I could never have imagined that I would be in the situation I am in now ... allowing exH to move back in, giving him dating advice, dating a new guy myself (and P at that!), happily living on a drastically reduced budget. All things that would have seemed impossible last April.

So with no future to obsessively plan for, I've got nothing better to do than live in the present. And it's not so bad not to know where I'm going ... the possibilities are open and endless.

Slow down, you crazy child
and take the phone off the hook and disappear for awhile
it's all right, you can afford to lose a day or two
When will you realize ... Vienna waits for you?