Time to dig in

On the cusp of graduation, I find myself looking about anxiously like a cornered animal, looking for a clear path to escape the approaching menace that is the real world.

Oh don't worry, this isn't another "woe is me" tirade from a 20-something who's waking up to the thought of a life without beer-pong.

No, I'm a 30-something entrepreneur who went back to school to finish a degree in something I'm confident will be a fruitful and enjoyable career. I'm ready to graduate. I'm ready to take life by the horns again, this time armed with a diploma and a mission. I'm just having a few jitters at the prospect of giving up life as I know it, the safety net of friends and family - moving away from a town that's comfortable, affordable and enjoyable. It's home.

It's enough to make one think about settling in, buying a house here in Lawrence while the market is soft. I could make this place I've grown so comfortable in my home base for a freelance career. In the meantime, I could also focus on a few of the start-up ideas that have been simmering in the back of my head.

Or, diploma in hand, I could throw caution to the wind and dash headlong into an industry that's hemorrhaging jobs and cutting salaries right and left.

Now you see my dilemma.

To compound the issue, I'm only one of the thousands of young journalists graduating this year, looking to enter a really scary market. It's enough to make you want to curl up in the fetal position and wait it out.

And then, in the midst of searching for job openings, I ran across a story I had to check out.

At 37, the Chairman, Product Architect and CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk is a bit of a hero of mine. Seriously, this guy makes me feel like a total underachiever, wondering what I've done with my life.

With billions in the bank from the sale of PayPal, which he co-founded during the dot-com explosion, this guy has the money and the smarts to do just about anything he sets out to. So when I discovered that his next big venture was to start a commercial space exploration company, I simply shrugged and said, "of course, why not? After all, when everything this world has to offer is within your reach, what's next but to colonize Mars?

After hearing about Musk's latest and most ambitious project yet, I remembered that nothing worth doing in life is easy. The world is smaller than we think and big ideas can translate to big lives. With that thought, the anxiety began to abate. Then I read this article, which shared the best advice Musk had ever been given: "Don't panic."

It wasn't long before excitement and ambition had once again taken anxiety's place. While I may not be launching car companies or rockets to international space stations, I've got an amazing life ahead of me and only five months to get ready for it. There are some big decision to make, and I'm done panicking.

It's time to dig in.