The high cost of failure

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: My life is blessed. It may not be ideal, of course, but everything always seems to work out for the best. For example, I did not want to commit to an apartment until I found a job (because I was worried about a long commute), but just after I signed a lease, I found a job that lets me work from home. I'd also stopped looking for a "good" job, and was willing to take any job, when I found this practically ideal job. But the most incredible thing of all is that just last month, I learned that to renew my UK work permit next May, I would need to prove my income for the previous 12 months. That meant I needed to be employed May 1 or I was going to get booted out of the UK next year. I started this job April 27.

But even though these things work out, that doesn't mean they are easy, and sometimes they leave scars. A year ago, I was so sure of myself I was willing to change continents, alone and unemployed. I met an amazing woman, experienced a whole new city, and really learned a whole new way of life. I felt invincible, my life was wide open, and everything seemed possible.

Today, though, despite achieving more than I'd hoped for, I feel much smaller. The possibilities have closed in, and I am feeling all my years, my fears, and my failures. I think the problem is, I moved to England to find myself, and I don't like what I found.

But the reality is that I'm still learning, and still growing. Off the top of my head, I can count a dozen experiences I would have never even known about had I not moved here and met Jessica, including bluebells (photo attached). Perhaps the real problem is that I'm looking at myself through a new context -- moving from a small pond to a big pond, as it were, and finding I'm not as big a fish as I'd imagined.