I can’t be the only one out there.  It’s not possible.  Statistics alone dictate that there must be others, just like me.

Some days, it doesn’t feel that way.  Some days, I think I must be so monumentally screwed up, lost, and clueless that I wonder how I find my own way home from the grocery store.  Everyone else seems to navigate easily and effortlessly. They put one foot in front of the other and they wind up going somewhere.  I, on the other hand, seem to bumble and stumble much more than the average person.  Is this simply my own skewed perception or a widely accepted fact?

I am 36 years old, divorced, and have just taken what would commonly be known as a hard shift down gear in terms of career.  I live in Small Town, USA and up until about 3 weeks ago, I thought I had everything together, all my apples lined up, all issues neatly folded and compartmentalized according to importance. 

Nothing could’ve been further from the truth.

I quit my job.  In this economy, I was fortunate enough to have a job with a great salary, competitive benefits, and relative security, if there is such a beast right now, and I walked away into the unknown. I’ve had this job for 5 years now and I was respected by my peers, recognized, at least verbally, for my hard work and achievements, and monetarily, was doing much, much better than most women my own age.  Actually, I was doing much, much better than most MEN my age. 

What was the problem, you might be asking, and this would be the million dollar question.  My job required extensive travel that made me a familiar fixture at the airports, a workload that literally sucked my will to live, and deadlines interspersed between the aforementioned responsibilities that meant I worked 7 days a week.  True, this was from a home office, but still, my schedule was not one to be envied or even endured for very long.  The travel alone will wear you down.

So, sitting in the airport on my last sojourn, I decided that enough was finally, beautifully, frighteningly enough. I could sponge off savings, explore some options, get some long overdue sleep in my own bed.  This life was well within the reach of my hand, if not only steps away from my resignation.  And before I changed my mind, before I listened to all the voices in my head, screaming for the opposition, before I let fear dictate me for one more day, I quit.  I am single, I have no children, and for once, this seemed to be a definite advantage for my current situation instead of the freakish label that small-town-society typically assigns.  I only have me to care for, and it’s about time I started.

That was 3 weeks ago.  In that time, I have found and accepted a local job in my same field, but at about half of my current salary.  Zero travel, which, of course, was the clincher for me, but a technical “demotion”, even if this move was elective.  The prospect of having my life back both excites and terrifies me.  I am concerned that, in my professional distraction, I have lost myself somewhere between airports, and with all the time in the world to spend with me now, I will be forced to face myself.  Forced to look at who I am if I’m not the professional go-getter who’s always jetsetting off on a mission.  An adult life of failed relationships will undoubtedly come closer to the surface now more than time allowed in the last 5 years. 

And so I wonder, as I set off on a whole new road, if I am the only one who feels that re-evaluation is necessary.  I wonder if I am the only person in the whole wide world who finds herself wondering where she is going, how she got here, and what in the world is next?  Am I the only woman who finds that her vision was seriously affected by jetlag and therefore lacking in acuity?

And am I the only one wondering just who this person is, anyway?