Just like that.

It is the ailment of the overachiever to be constantly racing to catch up with oneself. For this reason, I often unconsciously sell myself short, deny myself credit where credit is due because of any perceptible difference between my reality and my outlandish expectations.

Case in point: I graduated from college one year and 7 months ago, almost to the day. Yet ingrained in my mind is the inaccuracy that I have been out of school 2 years and counting. An insignificant difference in the grand scheme, perhaps, but in the that crucial 2-year post-graduate window of self discovery, five months is fairly substantial - nearly 25% of it, in fact.

Right now I am absorbing the shock of a 30 hour period that was, in ways, life changing. Yesterday at approximately 1pm I found the apartment I had been dreaming of since I first took residence in Manhattan one year and seven months ago. This dream apartment would grant me a sense of independence and maturity that I simply have not been able to achieve under the watchful eyes of a building my parents virtually hand-picked and provided for me - one so luxurious that rarely did a day pass that I didn't find it exorbitant, far exceeding the needs of someone like me - a young, capable and practical woman who cherishes privacy and is tormented by waste.

Today, at 7pm, I signed a lease.

Perhaps not the largest of milestones, but still a significant one - one that will shape at least the next year of my life and, consequently, those to come. One that will not sever, but at least loosen the ties that I have never lived without. And this decision is in no part an effort toward nobility; I am well aware that my circumstances still place me in just about the highest bracket of good fortune for someone my age, particularly taking into account the ratio of parental support (emotional and financial) to personal freedom. My parents are not nosy, commandeering, or nitpicky. They love, respect, and celebrate who I am in every way they know how. They are simply generous and devoted. And I am finally in a place where I feel like I can start to shed the layers of self-imposed guilt and learn to accept it, with unending gratitude and the ambition to move forward with fervor and integrity.

If I can do that in 30 hours, what can't I do in five months?

In the last eight months, I have reconnected with and been adopted into a theatrical family without whom I cannot imagine my life. I started working at Primary Stages only three-quarters of a year ago, and yet I feel as if I have never known my life without them. An artistic nucleus that represents to me such quality, consistency, humility and bravery as I have ever seen, run by a family of people who love and respect their work but never let it come before the people who make it happen.

A professional identity, artistic purpose, and daily incentive to work as hard as I can - in eight months? I'll take it.

In the last three months I have embarked on a new relationship, the details of which are too significant - too personal - to discuss here. Suffice it to say, three months is far less than five, and still more than enough for life to kick you in the back of the knees and show you who's boss - in the best way imaginable.

So what was missing in that first eight, even nine months or so after college that forced me to keep treading water, scrambling just to keep afloat emotionally as I tried to figure out even one reason to wake up in the morning? Now the reasons are so abundant and apparent, I can barely get my shoes on before I'm out the door.

For the first time since the staggering halt that followed graduation, I'm getting my momentum back. My adult momentum...and not the kind I had in college or high school, branded with an expiration date. This time, it doesn't have to stop.

And I vow not to shortchange myself five months or even 30 hours. Life is waiting, in spurts and stumbles and failures and triumphs, just around the corner. Maybe it's a job, maybe it's a boyfriend, maybe it's an apartment. Maybe it's your parents or maybe it's just a good book or the right song. The shape it takes is irrelevant, as long as, at the opportune moments, it reminds you that you deserve nothing less than all of you dreams coming true. The rest is up to you. The rest is up to me.