afraid of the future?

[sorry I've been slacking - and THANKS to those of you who noticed! you're appreciated!]

I've recently been able to bring words to something that I'm afraid of.

I used to think it was obscurity, the fear of not being known or remembered, but I realized that this isn't the part that disturbs me (perhaps because obscurity has to do with a heavy reliance on the opinions of others, which I shed more and more every day).

What I really fear is ending up in a place or a situation that makes me scream "Is this it?"

I look at the deli on the corner, and I think about the owner of that deli.
He's there every day, running things, dealing with customers, fretting about lower sales or pleased with an uptick of some sort, and then he goes home, and perhaps he's got a great family, but...well that's it, right? It's this small world that I'm afraid of, and I see it everywhere, in so many different jobs.

Right now, I'm young - I've got the security that comes with thinking "well I've always got TIME" to figure it all out, to do great things, to make my world and my life as diverse as it possibly can be - to discover meaning in my work. What I'm afraid of is that it won't happen. That I'll hit a dead end somehow, one that makes me realize that I've been working for years and have gotten nowhere, that I've totally not lived up to all the expectations that my life to this point so far has created for myself.

Can you imagine the type of burden this fear places on my future, and therefore on my present?
It's terrifying.

What's nice?
I know that I've got it all wrong.
I'll wait for my next post to point out exactly what I'm trying to remind myself.