Advice for Day 35: You gotta stop letting the Universe kick your ass all around this world

So I am going to try to make a long story short, which is rarely successful in the garrulously wonderful world I have created for myself...look I'm failing already.

Anyway, the short story is my boss (aka my very temporary part-time I will never put this on a resume boss) is crazy. She has been sucked into some bogus religious/pyramid scheme called Avatar (yes like the second-life video game) created by a man that got KICKED OUT OF SCIENTOLOGY- how crazy do you have to be to be kicked out of a church that eats placenta.

In her crazyness, she has decided that all her staff should also be educated in the Avatar way, which is a waste of time, money and my precious little sanity. But amid all the crazy, I have actually found a pretty genius nugget of less crazy.

The story Avatar tells is of a kid coming in from playing in the snow one day. He is standing in the doorway, letting the snow blow in. His mother yells at him, "Either choose in or out or i will choose for you." Avatar explains that the same is true for life; if you don't choose, the universe will choose for you. We call this fate but really it is just indecision.

For years I have thought fate was pushing me to be a journalist. I became editor of my high school paper with virtually no effort. I got these random articles published in local papers. I worked with a news organization in Argentina. None of this was really intentional career moves; it seemed fate wanted me to be a journalist.

Or really it was just mother universe slamming the door on an indecisive child, making me stay in the warm comfort of the house I know so well. I have always known how to write and I have always know how to tell a damn good story but it has not always been my conscience decision to be a journalist; it is my default.

When i try to get in touch with that illusive gut it doesn't want to move to Roswell, NM to live on 18,000 a year and 5 vacation days. It doesn't want to chase cop cars or listen to the police scanner. It doesn't want to have a "beat." It doesn't really want to be a reporter at all.

Still I love seeing my name in print and the newsroom does have this frenzied caffeinated smell to it that i love. I love listening to someone's story and then retelling it better. And finding the perfect quote to end a story makes transcribing 3 hours of tape worth it.

And so i am still a contradiction of guts. Which is why i am still standing in the doorway, sending resumes to papers i will never work at and not yet understanding what i really want to do.

But i know this time needs to be different. This time I have to stop letting mother universe kick my ass where ever is easiest. This time I know i don't really want to stay in the kitchen; i am done with safe. This time i have to step out of that door and into that blizzard of uncertainty.