The World Only Spins Forward

It's finally fall. My favorite season. A time of death but also of life. I feel energized in the fall alongside the leaves being set on fire. The colors, the change in the wind, the dead walking among the living. I feel empowered and embraced as the world slows down to rest for a few months under a blanket of white. It always feels like it is my time to shine.And I feel stuck.I've been struggling to cope with feeling left behind. It is something that is entirely inside me and nothing has caused this aside from my inner turmoil. I am regretting the 'break' I took that I attempt to praise myself for. Right now, I hate that I walked away.Somehow, in the three years I was out of the city, everyone I know has become successful. Okay, that's an exaggeration...sort of. I've watched from afar Broadway debuts, television appearances, book deals, art shows, promotions, and Instagram followers explode across my tribe. I couldn't be prouder or happier. What I could be is getting out of my own fucking way.Because I walked away and stopped working at a creative career for a minute, I feel like I am playing catch up. I let myself drift farther out to sea than I intended. I wanted to take myself out of the business and find what I truly want to do with my time here and I found myself lost in a fuzzy, weird world I didn't recognize. This in-between world where I failed to locate anything I loved. Now that I am back in the city where I feel like myself and anything is possible, I am like a freshman in high school. It is ground that is familiar but strange and I am unsure of where to step. I can see how hard work had paid off for my peers and it hits me how lazy I have been. I know I needed that time. I know I needed to fall apart to put myself back together. But now I am angry I let myself go for so long. I am scared I won't be able to catch up.I'm comparing myself to others which I despise that I do. Nevertheless, I continually do it. I convince myself I want these things my peers have when the majority of them are not what my dreams look like at all. I think because I currently feel I have nothing, I want anything anyone else has. I want to be a part of this level I have conjured up that doesn't actually exist but when the sensation of being left behind shows its ugly head, it is all I can see. This imaginary place where everyone is happy and successful and laughing and drinking tea and life is awesome. I don't know why they are drinking tea. It just seems like something people really satisfied with their current state of being do.A friend asked me last night what I am doing to combat this. Honestly, it is something that is difficult to fight off. I heard myself listing all the projects I am doing and begged my heart to listen and know that I am trying. It didn't work. I could be doing a million, billion things but I am still stuck.The city is cursed like this. There are so many levels of success and wish fulfillment happening around you as you walk these streets, it is hard not to examine and compare your status. I blame my break from New York as the reason I perceive myself as being behind. Choosing to leave meant also choosing to change everything I knew about my life. I started over in many ways. While the break is not entirely to blame, I can not expect my life to look like others when I was in a total different environment and lifestyle. I think the harsh reality of that is crushing me a bit. I sense I am behind because, well, I lived another life for three years with different opportunities that don't resemble those offered to the people around me.It was realizing that it was not the life I wanted that gave way to my return. It gave way to me scrambling to get back up where I forgot I wanted to be. It gave way to an anxious feeling I can't shake. Am I doing enough? Am I ever going to get there? Am I foolish for having left in the first place?Maybe. It's something I will most likely struggle with for years to come. I do not know if I will ever be able to say to myself if it was a mistake or a brave decision with solidity. I suppose if I had not left, I might not know certain parts about myself. I might not have fallen back into writing. I might not have found the value of the friendships I had cultivated here in the city. I might not have restarted my creative heart at all.I also might not feel behind.I know we all have our own journey and we make decisions in the moment of what we think we need. I made a decision and I rolled with it for three years. I made another decision and here I am with the repercussions: struggling to feel at peace with another restart. It isn't brand new to me but I have been out of the game long enough to feel like I am a baby deer learning to walk. I want to keep up but I am off balance. I want to run forward as fast as I can but I keep falling. I have been back six months. SIX. That is not a long period of time. New York is very talented at making you feel you HAVE go as quickly as you can and then it makes you trip over the corner of the sidewalk. Six months is not a lot of time to have suddenly regained everything I lost and be up in that magical successful land I picture my friends are all in. It's all in my head. I can still drink tea and be in a state of contentment as long as I do not let myself make excuses and actually fall behind unlike now where I am just feeling that way.I had major FOMO the entire time I was in Vermont. Being back has turned that feeling of missing out into a feeling of am I going to be able to keep up? It is such a strange state to be in. I always felt I was running alongside everyone else and now, I am trailing behind, watching their backs pass the horizon. I should have seen this coming in a way. I should have known that returning to a land of opportunity would take the rose tinted glasses off and I'd see what I missed. My baby deer legs will start to function as legs if I keep trying to stand. I made choices and I have to live with them. I can't go back and reverse it. The world only spins forward...