How Ursula got her groove back

General rule of my life: When it rains, it pours.

But the good news about that is that this time it's pouring happiness. I feel like me again! Yesterday I socialized with more skeletons (in the biomechanics lab) than people throughout the day (until nighttime), but I got my groove back. I probably should actually be more stressed than I am, but I'm feeling under control. (I have 4 meetings in a row tonight, but it's ok!) I also love Southwestern again and am satisfied to be here. I've also finally learned how to be ok not being in a relationship and honestly-- get this-- don't want to be in one. That's not to say I am opposed to dating, I just really can't do serious right now. And it's ok!!!!

Also, the career plan du jour is Teach for America for 2 years post-SU to get some money and to get the teaching bug out of my system. Then UT law, which I hear is actually a lot more fun than I thought. Then: world domination. By which I mean running a non-profit or NGO or working for da government. Or the trusty backup plan of writing things.


"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

I really enjoy that it took me this long to realize that the reason I'm so sluggish and deranged is that I'm not actually allowed to work out.

Existential crisis part deux

Actually, it isn't really very existential, but someone PLEASE remind me why I thought taking Anatomy was ok? Why? I mean, I have reasons, but they obviously aren't good enough ones. Why didn't I take Environmental Science like I knew I should? Today they are hearing a talk from a beekeeper for their lab. While I hear a 45 min lecture on muscle articulation and learn the entire musculature for the elbow, wrist, and hands. HAAA. This class is killing my beautiful GPA and making me feel stupid. And at this point there is nothing I can do about it. I did try to do my research last year, but I got such sketchy answers from people on the hardness of anatomy...lots of "ooh..eeee" and even "that's what made me decide to be a kines major" and now it's "holy Jesus why would you take that?" Where were those naysayers when I was asking last year????? I've made the dumbest scheduling decisions this year, and I can't do anything about it now except forge on for 3 more months and hope I don't deeply regret my stupidity come transcript time. It is entirely possible to get through this school without actually taking anything all that hard while still learning things; in other words to leave with a nice inflated GPA and a decent bank of knowledge, but apparently I derive some perverted pleasure out of taking needlessly difficult classes. Microeconomics is a case in point. I honestly can't say I remember very much or that I'm very glad in retrospect that I took that class. It was the downfall of my 4.0 with one little minus, and I don't even think I got much out of it. Except maybe I kind of know something about how houses made the economy suck.

Also, I am ridiculously sleepy but not tired. My body is antsy mcantspants, but I can barely keep my eyes open. I was literally beating my face in class to keep my eyes from crossing. I even went to bed before midnight last night! (Thought I did get awakened to open the door for someone and was very confused by the fact that I'd been asleep...I can't really explain it. I also had a lot of very vivid dreams about naming body parts. Yeahhh.) I do not want to become addicted to caffeine!!!

Vices:
Chai
Dark Chocolate
Panicking
List making

Time to go stare at my inspirational rodent screen saver.

Ok this is getting kind of obsessive, but when I'm stressed, I organize things, even my brain. Soo, fueled by liberal-arts inspired critical thinking skills, here is an organized version of my existential crisis.

About every 3 years I have one of these crises, and every time it rearticulates the same ideas in a more analytical context. Basically, it grows up with me and my vocabulary. It also grows inversely to my knowing who I am. I know myself very well. It's more a matter of what to do and how to think.

There is nothing I can do about some of it. I am impatient to be somewhere, actually doing something, having a "real" life, not stuck here putting in the grunt work. Time, however, can't be changed, no matter how hard I try. The rest of my problem is a matter of binaries (thank you, Levi-Strauss): useful vs. enjoyable, fun/less "achievement vs. work/more "achievement," exploration vs. domesticity, idealist vs. realist, put on the happy pants vs. give myself a break. I don't know how to just accept that a lot of things are BS (i.e. the college lifestyle), but that's ok. Now that I write this down I feel a little less abnormal, because I sound like half the people in the universe who have taken a semester off, dropped out of school, joined a convent, etc.

Action plan:
-Write. Anything, everything, all the time, whenever. Please God, help me find my creativity again.
-Humor. My constant fallback companion, the monologue in my head. Self deprecation puts everything in perspective.
-Continue my personal mantra of: think good things, say good things, do good things
-Accept that I will probably never reconcile the desire to achieve the most with a need for fun, so do very best but don't freak out over "failure"
-Forgive myself.

I move closer to the person I want to be through these crises. I think it's ok to have this period of time in which I'm just not entirely ok, because I'll come out of it even more ok than before. I already feel like I've reached a new place. Change is just hard. The only thing I possibly can do is move forward. I didn't live today like I meant to, but I can leave tonight like I want to. Every personal leap needs somewhere to leap from.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world... as in being able to remake ourselves.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Immediate personal response to last post:

I don't get myself. I can't even just feel some real emotions without explaining them away as some stupid, unimportant, self-wallowing thing. Why do I make fun of myself for thinking deep things? It's one of those contradictions...don't take life too seriously but life is deep. Blah whatever.

Psychobabble

The last month has been like a big, charcoal gray cloud looming just a bit over my head, occasionally punctuated by a few timid rays of sunshine. A lot of the feelings I have now are almost sickeningly familiar and are almost perversely enjoyable, that old sense of queasily contented self-containment, in particular. I always alarm myself at how well I hold up to things, probably mostly due to my terror of deep sadness. It's just managed to manifest as a general hazy gloom and negativity that waits to pounce whenever I let my guard down. I used to love my alone time, revel in it...but now it just makes me feel strange.

I wonder if some of this feeling is me grappling with this strange adulthood transition. I am no longer a part of my family pod; I am a little seed that has blown away to strike out all by myself, unsure where I'll land. I am such a very small part of this huge world. I used to be so naively excited about taking on the world, but now I'm overwhelmed, and I don't want to be alone. I am not a loner, but I feel like I'm almost forced to be a lot of the time because I just can never take the easy way around anything.

I'm not sure where my sense of never-aloneness went. I always had a sense that God/the universe/whatever had its arms wrapped around me, always watching, always helping, but I keep losing that feeling. I feel almost not a part of myself, even, like I detach from my body sometimes. I wish I could say it was highly effective meditation, but it's like I'm outside of my own self, marveling at this whole swirling life that belongs to this thing called Ursula, a word that I automatically respond to and somehow sums up this animated form. Maybe I'm really a prophetess on some higher plane of consciousness. That would explain things.

I can't afford to lose myself right now. What happened to the indestructible me?

I don't like being this weird emo kid.

Just when I fall apart, and especially when I start to hit bottom, God shows up through coincidences and reminds me of how magical life is.