Enchanted, I'm sure.

There has got to be something sexy about confidence. Something has been going on with me in the last few years, where the most unexpected things are coming full circle. It must be the shift in the energy around me, because I am pulling in resolutions of some very old things in my life.

I am becoming. In the sense that I am making bold and deliberate strides toward my new career and, in some ways, my new self. I am making concerted attempts to shed unhealthy habits and modes of communication. It isn't easy and is sometimes painful to let go of long-held baggage. Some of it is actual objects, such as the clutter that was littering my office closet. Some of it is in the form of erroneous assumptions I have made about situations or people. I can see so clearly now that in my adolescence and young adulthood I was a very poor communicator. I hurt people without a backward glance, out of sheer carelessness most of the time. Or worse yet, out of a morbid curiosity about what would happen if I poked at the innards of another person.

Now I feel like I am going through another kind of adolescence. I am flowering into a new kind of woman and gaining confidence in many new areas. I am shedding my phobias and nervous tics to a degree. However, like adolescence the first time around, there is awkwardness in my new skin. I feel unfamiliar in the changing landscape, and don't know what the future holds. I feel at once entirely conspicuous and totally invisible. I am waiting for the world to stop spinning so fast so I can get a look at my new surroundings.

It feels enchanted, like I have fallen into a fairy ring. The world is the same but entirely other. Things are the same but not the same. Old faces are coming up in new situations, as I find myself mixing with people I have known forever in curious new ways. So I must not be the only one going through it. People around me are processing. That is the only word I can think of to describe it. We are all turning 40 and looking around and going "Whoa!" like in a Keanu Reeves movie.

It keeps coming to me. Or rather they do. People I didn't even realize I needed to be forgiven by or whom I need to forgive. Or people who I always wanted affection from, and now I am getting it in a different but somehow more satisfying way. It is strange.

Are these the first gushes of albumin-rich fluid to come out of the cosmic egg? The first pin feathers on my nascent and untested wings? It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. The vibe is like a revving up. It spurs me, even when I feel tired, to do more.

Do more? Really? I already feel like I have a jet pack strapped to my back. Just trying to control my trajectory seems unlikely. Yet here I am, pressing for more throttle, and feeling the engine leap under me. I have a map and a vague idea of where I am going, but with a million possible roads to get there.

I am grateful for the future, even if getting there is going to be hard. I have a feeling I am going to be worth knowing when I grow up again.