On Learning From One's Mistakes

I cannot keep making the same mistakes over and over. I have vowed that I will not hit my head on the same wall, the only difference being the space in between the hits. While I don't want to work and go to school at the same time, I cannot be without a job. I spent my 20s hopping from job to job with long droughts of willfull unemployment and I get sick just thinking about being in the same predicament. I think the best thing for me mentally is to keep working. I don't make nearly enough money now and it stresses me out, I can't imagine the circles my mind would be running in if I didn't have any income coming in. I can't rely on unemployment because I'm sure that could run out at any second, so, I guess I should prepare myself for a different kind of stress; working full-time while going to school part-time. Oy. Wish me luck.

What's Scarier than Freddy?

I hate doing things that scare me. I'm not talking about the kind of fright that comes from watching a scary movie, or walking through a graveyard at night by yourself, I'm talking about the things that could expansively impact your life, change everything as you know it. Yeah, those things; they frighten me more than Freddy ever could and I'm a complete chicken#$@! when it comes to forcing myself to fight through it. I've been needing to go back to school for at least five years and now that I have the applications in my hands, they've just been sitting in my room for weeks blank because what if I turn them in and I get a big fat no? My good ole frenemy rejection is whispering in my ear, telling me there's no way any of these schools will want me, because what have I done to deserve getting into their programs? I don't know how to fight through the fear; it's why I've been stuck for the past five years in almost the exact same place while everyone I know around me has been running towards all of the milestones of the late twenties, early thirties. I am done with being left behind, but how do I get myself in the race? How easy is it to overcome crippling self-doubt? If the paralysis is self-inflicted, how do you convince yourself to move?