I can't do this because...

It's scary.

I'm too tired. No, I'm REALLY too tired.

It's paralyzingly terrifying.

Someone else could do it better.

It makes me feel terrible about myself.

I feel ill.

It makes me want to curl up under my blanket in the fetal position and never stop.

The timing doesn't work.

My schedule is all complicated and wonky.

I don't want to. Really, really don't want to.

It's too stressful to be healthy.

Did I mention I'm terrified?

I get a lot of that going on in my brain. And I'm not the only one, I'm sure.

Excuses are easy. They are one thing I totally can do. I am brilliant at finding ways not to do things.

I've never thought of myself as a cowardly person. In fact I've normally been quite a brave person. Not for the past couple years.

I do not like being this way. In so many ways I want to go back to the naively ambitious and recklessly forward moving person I was in high school and most of college.

It's not like all the excuses are bad ones, either. I mean, terror is terror. Exhaustion is exhaustion. Time is time, health is health. Not in any way things to be taken lightly.

Here's the thing though. I've known for a while that the only way to get this seriously paralyzing terror out of my system is to force myself to just do the terrifying thing. In a lot of ways this move to DC has done that. New job, new place, new people, all of that comes with all the things I'm afraid of and starts the excuse train going through my head.

But it's been almost three months now, and I'm still alive. And not "in-a-mental-institution" alive either, but actually doing well and getting well-er. It's amazing to be on the other side of doing an impossible thing.

There are still some big, terrifying things coming up in my life. That's how life goes. But I'm thinking/hoping that I've jumped the first and worst hurdle, and that the future hurdles won't kill me either. I know that they're hurdles worth jumping, and in many ways that's enough to get you over.

Sometimes the things are small, like not wanting to cook dinner or go to a staff meeting or call that person you've been meaning to call. Sometimes its big--switching jobs, going to graduate school, moving across the country. Either way, the excuses are always valid and solid as cement shoes.

And I'm done with them.

I'm not saying this will change overnight. And I'm not saying the excuses can all just be ignored, either. Some, maybe, but many need to be addressed. So I'll address it and move on. Excuses are real, but its the people who move past them that accomplish great things.

I'm terrified.