I really know how it feels to be stressed out, stressed out

This is an old post that I was too embarassed/ashamed/scared to publish...
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I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety around a few things, and it's preventing me from "functioning normally" in my everyday life.

I'm having recurring moments of self-doubt that are preventing me from asserting my feelings and intentions. I'm playing it safe and I don't like it. I feel like I'm giving into groupthink (bandwagon hopping), and I'm not challenging my professors or the curriculum that I'm learning. I'm accepting it all.

Why?

I can only move for so long without a plan. Spontaneous decisions are cool in the beginning but I need to devise well thought out strategies. I also need to realize that I don't need to "like" everything. It's okay to like nothing. I see the value in what I'm learning, and need to appreciate that more.

I wish I could have a "difficult conversation". Instead I leave conversations or discussions feeling completely shitted on. I smile and take it.

I don't want to work for free for something that I love forever. I want to get paid for it. I actually don't want to pay someone for the work that I've been doing for free for the past 2 years. I don't want to be expected to train this person either. I don't want to be expected to fill in the blanks when this hired person, who has no real history with the magazine, decides to say that they can't do 10, 20, 30 or 40% of their workload. I want people who work with me to get paid for it. I want the move from "volunteer" to "employee" to be strategic and rolled over a set period of time. I don't want to be expected to "hold the fort" writing grant applications, soliciting funding, advertising, and business sustainability while going to school full-time and working 1, 2 or 3 jobs just to pay my rent. Am I being selfish?

I want to challenge the things that I learn. I want to know what kinds of questions to ask in order to benefit from my "challenges". I want to be comfortable with being wrong. I want to be comfortable with being looked at as the keener who always sits in the front row and gets good grades. I want to be the president of the muthafuckin student council. I want to learn how to run large scale bodies of people in a way that can satisfy the needs of many. I want to understand the economics of the world and become comfortable with numbers. I want to be able to throw that shit in the face of banks, politicians, and companies who choose not to invest in communities for "worthy" causes because it's safe to just give to the breast cancer society for the 15th year.

I want to grill my city councillor at the meeting I'll have with her in March. I want to get back on the "activism" scene.

But I can't.

I'm expected to be a good student, a good unpaid employee for a magzine and organization that I started (and have been able to continue with 4 other women), an even better paid employee at the 3 jobs I have, and a responsible rent-paying tenant.

I have no time to get caught up in the other shit.

Sometimes I wonder why I do it to myself and think "Just quit that fuckin magazine. You'll never get paid and nobody will ever think you're worth paying." Or, "drop out of school, you've made enough connections to hustle your way into another job that you're technically underqualified for, but will excel at." Then I think that I should just tell people how I really feel.

I try, you know I try. But that shit will never work. I'll turn into the old ig'nant me. And we don't want that angry black woman to come out.

I'm so frickin stressed out.