Life On Pause

It happened. The downswing. February. The new year buzz has worn off and we are now in winter, it's snowing, and I am on month three of having no job. Here we are.I have been feeling like my life is on pause. I've attempted to do some soul searching in the past two weeks as the darkness rolls back in. I read my old blogs, the ones I wrote when I started this project about why I left New York. I had very good reasons. I didn't feel like my life was on pause then. I felt new and shiny. Now, I'm battered and broken.WTF.It has to do with dreams. When I imagined my dream life when I was a kid, it had no bounds. Obviously. It isn't until life moves or changes quickly, swipes the rug out from under us somehow, that we start to doubt our limitless dreams. We add a few alterations here and there as we move forward. I did. More rugs are pulled out and I change it again. Right now, I have no rugs. I am standing on a bare floor and my dream life is in pieces. I thought I was at a crossroads before but I guess I am now? Or maybe life is all just crossroads and we drive along for a while until we come to another one. I don't think I was searching for much. Yet it has been bad news after unfortunate event after surprising loss consistently for the past few years.Is the universe trying to point something out to me? Do I need to change my dreams once again? Or maybe go back to the one that started it all.My life feels on pause because my dreams are sitting and spinning in a crystal ball above me. They have been static for quite a while. Longer than I expected. I keep asking myself the same questions.-Am I not trying hard enough?-Is there another dream I am not seeing?I know many mediums will encourage you to take a pause, take time, take a breath. I sort of did that. I took a step back. This is a different kind of pause. This is a pause that I didn't press.I've been hopeful. I've been positive. It's been difficult and I am exhausted. Life on pause is surprisingly more tiring than when life is at full speed. Perhaps it is because my mind is racing constantly and I am grabbing at anything that flies by me to see if it fits. Life at full speed, you're going so fast you might not have time to pay attention to every detail. On pause, that's all you see. The details. The cracks. The fuck ups. This is a big downer, I know. But I am down and out right now. I'm experiencing The Big Snooze that You Are A Badass talks about. Going through the motions of a life or job or location that doesn't feel right, doesn't fit, it's just there and you want something more.Life off of pause, my dream life, is far simpler than it used to be. I adjust as things change. I've chiseled down the sections in my soul searching during this downward slope and I don't have many going for me right now. There isn't much spinning outside of that crystal ball in spite of my best efforts. Could be a sign. Could just be a dry spell. Could be me not trying hard enough or looking for it in all the wrong places. Being on pause is like a hamster in a wheel. Churning forward but never moving. Just static and stuck.I think I assumed some items of my dream life were out of reach. I made big changes and let them go because I did not think I wanted or needed them any more. I was wrong. Well, I was at least off course more than I realized. The aspects of my dream life might be the aspects I need to truly be content and happy. Some are small, some are grand, all achievable in reality. It's not that I thought they weren't, I just tricked my brain into thinking I didn't need them and wanted something else. I've been searching for a while now and I am more lost than when I started.So, crossroads. Life on pause. Spinning crystal balls of dreams and all the rugs are gone. That's a lot of metaphors. Sorry.With another blow thrown today in the world of bad news, what do I do now? This is a rhetorical question. I know we are all at crossroads at one point or another. I've just been sitting at this one for a long time and the direction has yet to come to me. The road has yet to call to me. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe I just pick one and press play.