- noun
1. A natural liking or attraction to a person, thing, idea, etc.
2. a person, thing, idea, etc., for which such an attraction is felt.
3. A relationship by marriage or by ties other than blood.
4. Inherent likeness or agreement; close resemblance or connection.
5. Biology: the phylogenetic relationship between two organisms or groups of organisms resulting in a resemblance in general plan or structure, or in the essential structural parts.
6. Chemistry: the force by which atoms are held together in chemical compounds.
- adjective
7. Of or pertaining to persons who share the same interests.
Last night I attended a party where I knew most of the other guests, but I didn't know any of them well. While we watched the adorable 2-year-old daughter of one couple run around and play and say incredibly cute and adult-like things, we started to talk about childhood and how children imitate and display their family/social group's culture.
One of the guests told a story about his time teaching very young students (7-10 years) in Thailand recently. He said that in Thailand, it is a very important part of the culture for everyone to belong to a specific social group. He said this as though it were not the same in the US. He described the culture as extremely tolerant, but at the same time emphasized that it was extremely important in the area where he taught that each individual identify with some group. He didn't specify in what way that this importance is communicated, but he gave an example of a young boy telling him, "you don't need to call me Mr. so-and-so, I'm a fairy-girl," by which the child which meant that he was claiming identity as a homosexual with an affinity with a well-known and accepted group.
This was probably the most interesting thing said all night. Everyone in the group marveled at the wonderful example of undeniable "tolerance" displayed in the example: a child felt free enough to associate with a group which in the US might be treated with far less tolerance! (gasp!)
It reminded me of the recurring human need for "belonging," and the associated feelings of affinity for shared customs, symbols, traditions, activities. For this child, of course, as with US school children, it's likely that the social group he was claiming with his words and actions was not yet well-defined enough in his mind for him to truly relate; rather, he was testing out the "fit" of a social role he didn't understand yet but which had a symbolic or iconic quality for him, through play. And through play he would come to understand whether or not the social role really fit him (an alternative notion of social roles might say that playing in this social role would shape him. I tend to think it's a little bit of both).
Earlier that day at lunch, my classmates and I had laughed about how much more meaning was conveyed in certain movies we'd seen as kids than we were ever aware of, as kids. We may have loved the movies as kids, but we didn't understand everything. We can remember not understanding it, but we can't always identify the moments when we came to understand. It was by being exposed to those unintelligible meanings and then having subsequent life experiences that we came to our own fuller personal understanding of meaning.
It's amusing (and maybe a little bit lonely) to know that even as we marvel over what we think are shared experiences, even as we feel understood by others and laugh about our personal journey to gain understanding, the meanings in our heads are always completely our own. Yet so often we try to impose them on others, selfishly. And sometimes we impose these meanings that we come to understand on ourselves, but we think that they're being imposed by others because of our own need to "belong" to a group.
As I listened to the party guest's story about the Thai boy's play at social games which were foreign and yet not foreign to the same behavior in our region, I reminded myself that adults are really no different from children. A favorite mentor of mine once said, "adults are just kids with responsibilities and big-people clothes on." Like children, adults are also free to "play" with our lives and social roles, unless we have "locked" ourselves out of freedom through our need to belong by choosing a social role that forbids straying outside its defining traditions, lest we become ostracized and lose our social ties. Commitments to family, job, and other responsibilities are still choices, even they might not feel that way from the "inside."
If our lifestyle is part of a small-scale local "counter-culture" or "indie movement" rejecting some larger-scale social norms, if our choices use the choices of others as models for our own then we're still choosing a social group. The very personal context in which we make the choice to align with some social group can hide the fact that we're aligning with that group from our consciousness. By trying to be edgy and original, we are of course just like everyone else who's trying to be edgy and original.
The real edge is not a sharp edge, it's a frayed and ragged edge because pieces of it reach further from the "middle" than others. It's lonely at the edge, but when there's nowhere else to belong, it's one place to go. And as some approach the edge, others are drawn by them and follow, and eventually the edge becomes the middle.
It's more work not to be part of any group than it is to try to be part of some group in particular.
Nothing particularly original here. Just teasing out my own sense of meaning.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Volition
- noun
1. The act of willing, choosing, or resolving; exercise of willing.
2. A choice or decision made by the will.
3. The power of willing; will.
The easiest and also the most difficult way to use our volition is to submit, to have faith.
I've been alone for so long. Even when I wasn't alone, I was lonely. Maybe because I had to learn to submit my lonely volition to His Will before I could be secure enough to really be with someone else -- so that He could show me who I really am supposed to be according to His plan, so that I could love that someone else for who they are and what they are becoming without shaping myself to their reality because I don't have enough reality of my own. To keep me from being pulled off-balance by their gravity.
I guess it worked, because I'm physically alone again for the first weekend in months, the start of more than 3 weeks without relationship-y things to look forward to, but I'm not lonely at all; instead, I feel thoughtful, positive energy. I always said that I preferred being alone to being with people, and I was telling the truth: even my best friends would make me feel achy with loneliness after a while. I'd have to get away from them in order to recharge. But when I was alone I'd inevitably start to think about the loneliness and wonder about it.
Today, this alone-time feels good, or maybe even so much better than it used to, because I'm not bored and I'm so happy with where my life seems to be going. Although I'm not really sure where that is, so maybe there's another reason why I'm happy.
On Friday I read thru an old journal which spans the progress from a very desolate time in my life thru the first year or so of my new job. I do this from time to time, because my journals are like maps which, if I re-read them, will keep me from going in endless circles (the definition of insanity?). This journal documents my first genuine, willing-to-listen questions about God's plan for my life. Ok, God, I'm apparently doing a shitty job at this being-a-happy-independent-successful-person thing, just like you tried to tell me, so help me out a little. Since I really meant it and I was willing to listen even if I didn't like the answers, there it was.
Just keep asking questions and follow Me.
It worked. It's so easy, but it was so hard. It's pretty easy to fall off the path, but now that I know where the path is, it's much easier to find. But I still can't explain it to anyone else, and its hard to watch them struggle. That bothers me on some levels, but on others I'm comforted because I know that my happiness, or at least stability under pressure, proves that it's possible to be this way to others who haven't figured that out yet. I am being used by using myself for God's plan.
It's also frustrating to see the guide to the path/plan that I understand twisted by so much distortion of doctrine, and to know that others potentially view my faith and happiness thru distorted lenses which abound within mainstream religion. I don't want to be perceived as naive, judgmental, lascivious, etc, but I guess that's what Christ went thru. Today I'm comforted because I know that each of us takes our own journey and must learn our own truths. Perhaps that was a source of the loneliness, before? I was afraid to walk my own path, but today I rest in faith? I learn to keep letting go.
Time is a test. Moment by moment, can you keep the balance, as the speed and difficulty increase?
I just remembered the conversation which sparked what became the last four months of not-alone-ness was about human free will, predestination, and the nature of God's plan at the brunch table in February. Doug lent me Boethus' Consolation of Philosophy. And so it went, and so it goes. Conversations, rambles, shared experiences, endless distances.
We choose our path. We choose to stay on it, we choose to step off. And when we choose the path that is already chosen for us by Truth and Love, and when we are willing to choose to let go to stay with that path, we come to realize the greatest comfort of all: we are not alone.
1. The act of willing, choosing, or resolving; exercise of willing.
2. A choice or decision made by the will.
3. The power of willing; will.
The easiest and also the most difficult way to use our volition is to submit, to have faith.
I've been alone for so long. Even when I wasn't alone, I was lonely. Maybe because I had to learn to submit my lonely volition to His Will before I could be secure enough to really be with someone else -- so that He could show me who I really am supposed to be according to His plan, so that I could love that someone else for who they are and what they are becoming without shaping myself to their reality because I don't have enough reality of my own. To keep me from being pulled off-balance by their gravity.
I guess it worked, because I'm physically alone again for the first weekend in months, the start of more than 3 weeks without relationship-y things to look forward to, but I'm not lonely at all; instead, I feel thoughtful, positive energy. I always said that I preferred being alone to being with people, and I was telling the truth: even my best friends would make me feel achy with loneliness after a while. I'd have to get away from them in order to recharge. But when I was alone I'd inevitably start to think about the loneliness and wonder about it.
Today, this alone-time feels good, or maybe even so much better than it used to, because I'm not bored and I'm so happy with where my life seems to be going. Although I'm not really sure where that is, so maybe there's another reason why I'm happy.
On Friday I read thru an old journal which spans the progress from a very desolate time in my life thru the first year or so of my new job. I do this from time to time, because my journals are like maps which, if I re-read them, will keep me from going in endless circles (the definition of insanity?). This journal documents my first genuine, willing-to-listen questions about God's plan for my life. Ok, God, I'm apparently doing a shitty job at this being-a-happy-independent-successful-person thing, just like you tried to tell me, so help me out a little. Since I really meant it and I was willing to listen even if I didn't like the answers, there it was.
Just keep asking questions and follow Me.
It worked. It's so easy, but it was so hard. It's pretty easy to fall off the path, but now that I know where the path is, it's much easier to find. But I still can't explain it to anyone else, and its hard to watch them struggle. That bothers me on some levels, but on others I'm comforted because I know that my happiness, or at least stability under pressure, proves that it's possible to be this way to others who haven't figured that out yet. I am being used by using myself for God's plan.
It's also frustrating to see the guide to the path/plan that I understand twisted by so much distortion of doctrine, and to know that others potentially view my faith and happiness thru distorted lenses which abound within mainstream religion. I don't want to be perceived as naive, judgmental, lascivious, etc, but I guess that's what Christ went thru. Today I'm comforted because I know that each of us takes our own journey and must learn our own truths. Perhaps that was a source of the loneliness, before? I was afraid to walk my own path, but today I rest in faith? I learn to keep letting go.
Time is a test. Moment by moment, can you keep the balance, as the speed and difficulty increase?
I just remembered the conversation which sparked what became the last four months of not-alone-ness was about human free will, predestination, and the nature of God's plan at the brunch table in February. Doug lent me Boethus' Consolation of Philosophy. And so it went, and so it goes. Conversations, rambles, shared experiences, endless distances.
We choose our path. We choose to stay on it, we choose to step off. And when we choose the path that is already chosen for us by Truth and Love, and when we are willing to choose to let go to stay with that path, we come to realize the greatest comfort of all: we are not alone.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Polarity
- noun 1. physics. a. the property or characteristic that produces unequal physical effects at different points in a body or system. b. the positive or negative state in which a body reacts to a magnetic, electric, or other field.
2. the presence or manifestation of two opposite or contrasting principles or tendencies.
3. Liguistics a. (of words, phrases, or sentences) positive or negative character. b. polar opposition.
As I was running I thought about the contrast between my last two posts. Inspiration followed by lack of inspiration? Am I just being moody and fickle? But no, I decided, I am progressing along a course of thought and experience. I suppose a more accurate title for the last post might be causality, but I'll leave it as it is because "because" worked best, at that moment.
Causality doesn't work for this post, either, because the strongest force in a totally new area of my life is polarity: the polarity of this relationship I'm in, the one that stretches and challenges me. Last Friday we had a conversation, not the first or the last, which touched on theology. I felt misunderstood and, more importantly, incapable of expressing my thoughts, which happens frequently with this guy, but for some reason doesn't completely infuriate me but instead makes me let go and listen more. Lately he's doing a great job reining in an attitude of condescension which has been known to shut me down, and trying to listen more to my feeble attempts to critically think about completely new, raw material.
So as I got home from a sweaty run tonight and re-read my last post, as I txted back and forth with him, I suddenly read my words thru what I imagine his perspective might be. And I laughed, because it is so easy to misinterpret what I mean by finding "God's plan" and "bible study" and "spiritual growth." Because those concepts are so completely personal and subjective, but they're so very mine that I can't conjure up any other words to convey my meaning to myself. I can't even describe them here because they are the sum of a book's worth of experiences.
That is the nature of and the reason for my why?: it is all of the questions that create the conditions for the answers to appear to me. I've never really had to communicate them to another person in this way, so it's been like writing with my left hand at times.
My why? isn't broken. It's been exhausted by the polarity, which has been slowly making it stronger.
More to come.
2. the presence or manifestation of two opposite or contrasting principles or tendencies.
3. Liguistics a. (of words, phrases, or sentences) positive or negative character. b. polar opposition.
As I was running I thought about the contrast between my last two posts. Inspiration followed by lack of inspiration? Am I just being moody and fickle? But no, I decided, I am progressing along a course of thought and experience. I suppose a more accurate title for the last post might be causality, but I'll leave it as it is because "because" worked best, at that moment.
Causality doesn't work for this post, either, because the strongest force in a totally new area of my life is polarity: the polarity of this relationship I'm in, the one that stretches and challenges me. Last Friday we had a conversation, not the first or the last, which touched on theology. I felt misunderstood and, more importantly, incapable of expressing my thoughts, which happens frequently with this guy, but for some reason doesn't completely infuriate me but instead makes me let go and listen more. Lately he's doing a great job reining in an attitude of condescension which has been known to shut me down, and trying to listen more to my feeble attempts to critically think about completely new, raw material.
So as I got home from a sweaty run tonight and re-read my last post, as I txted back and forth with him, I suddenly read my words thru what I imagine his perspective might be. And I laughed, because it is so easy to misinterpret what I mean by finding "God's plan" and "bible study" and "spiritual growth." Because those concepts are so completely personal and subjective, but they're so very mine that I can't conjure up any other words to convey my meaning to myself. I can't even describe them here because they are the sum of a book's worth of experiences.
That is the nature of and the reason for my why?: it is all of the questions that create the conditions for the answers to appear to me. I've never really had to communicate them to another person in this way, so it's been like writing with my left hand at times.
My why? isn't broken. It's been exhausted by the polarity, which has been slowly making it stronger.
More to come.
Because
- conjunction
1. For the reason that; due to the fact that
- Idiom
2. Because of; by reason of; due to
- Usage note
1. See reason
I think my why? is broken. Yes, I said my why?. It's at least malfunctioning. Non-functioning, actually. Maybe it's the heat. The heat is causing most of me to malfunction. It makes sense that, in order to complete its assault, the heat's malevolence would go for the very source of my energy and try to get at my why?.
My why?, by the way, is the facet of my self that finds my Why. For the last several years I've been making incredible progress based solely on the force of my Why.
In my last post I named my current challenge: to formulate a new List, now that literally everything I wanted to do, in big-picture pursuit of an independent-but-not-insanely-so-while-contributing-positively-to-the-world life, is done. I'm currently just coasting along on the positive inertia of the last two years' Why-driven work. In days gone by, I had only to wait in order for the why? to start examining everything in me until the pressure built up and I spontaneously entered list-making mode. But if there's no why?, there's no pressure, and therefore no List.
Hmmm.
Perhaps I should take inventory while I still have time, before the complete madness of the school year follows the heat's energy-suck and tramples me flat. That would be bad, and certainly completely ruin the progress I made.
The most why?-inspiring questions I remember asking in the past, to get me started, were:
1) What is God's plan for my life?
2) What the hell do I have to do to feel good about my body and look good in my clothes?
3) How the hell do I get this freakin' list of stuff done?!
Ok, the things that need the most immediate work (again) are:
1) spiritual life
2) physical health & fitness
3) time management system (in preparation for the future overwhelmed-ness).
4) STUDY
OK that's done. Time for a run and a bible study, then a STUDY. Watch out, heat. I'm looking for my why? via God's plan, and you're not gonna stop me.
1. For the reason that; due to the fact that
- Idiom
2. Because of; by reason of; due to
- Usage note
1. See reason
I think my why? is broken. Yes, I said my why?. It's at least malfunctioning. Non-functioning, actually. Maybe it's the heat. The heat is causing most of me to malfunction. It makes sense that, in order to complete its assault, the heat's malevolence would go for the very source of my energy and try to get at my why?.
My why?, by the way, is the facet of my self that finds my Why. For the last several years I've been making incredible progress based solely on the force of my Why.
In my last post I named my current challenge: to formulate a new List, now that literally everything I wanted to do, in big-picture pursuit of an independent-but-not-insanely-so-while-contributing-positively-to-the-world life, is done. I'm currently just coasting along on the positive inertia of the last two years' Why-driven work. In days gone by, I had only to wait in order for the why? to start examining everything in me until the pressure built up and I spontaneously entered list-making mode. But if there's no why?, there's no pressure, and therefore no List.
Hmmm.
Perhaps I should take inventory while I still have time, before the complete madness of the school year follows the heat's energy-suck and tramples me flat. That would be bad, and certainly completely ruin the progress I made.
The most why?-inspiring questions I remember asking in the past, to get me started, were:
1) What is God's plan for my life?
2) What the hell do I have to do to feel good about my body and look good in my clothes?
3) How the hell do I get this freakin' list of stuff done?!
Ok, the things that need the most immediate work (again) are:
1) spiritual life
2) physical health & fitness
3) time management system (in preparation for the future overwhelmed-ness).
4) STUDY
OK that's done. Time for a run and a bible study, then a STUDY. Watch out, heat. I'm looking for my why? via God's plan, and you're not gonna stop me.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Inspire(ation)
–verb (used with object)
1. to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence.
2. to produce or arouse (a feeling, thought, etc.).
3. to fill or affect with a specified feeling, thought, etc.
4. to influence or impel: Competition inspired her to greater efforts.
5. to animate, as an influence, feeling, thought, or the like, does.
6. to communicate or suggest by a divine or supernatural influence.
7. to guide or control by divine influence.
8. to prompt or instigate (utterances, acts, etc.) by influence, without avowal of responsibility.
9. to give rise to, bring about, cause, etc.
10. to take (air, gases, etc.) into the lungs in breathing; inhale.
11. Archaic .
a.to infuse (breath, life, etc.) by breathing (usually fol. by into ).
b. to breathe into or upon.
I need to study. It’s so hard to make myself get the notebook out and do the work when there’s so much waiting to be read. But I know that I can’t NOT do this, I’ve been trying not to do this for years now, and there’s no escape.
I was stuck in an in-between: I know way too much to be a subservient administrative cog or to be content stifled by ignorance around me; but I don’t know enough to be truly competent (or confident) doing anything else. Unlike most of my classmates, I don’t want this MBA to make more money. As far as money, I just want to make enough to live comfortably, perhaps contribute to raising a family someday, and take care of myself in my old age if I make it that long. What I REALLY want is to “make the world a better place” but I don’t know what the hell that means yet. I just know that I wasn’t in a position to do it without a firm grasp of really nerdy business concepts, some solid credentials from a strong, well-known school, and a wide network of future contacts for when I eventually do figure it out.
I need a new “list.” I’ve been just taking life as it came for 2 years now, and accomplished everything on the limited but complicated “list” I made once I paid all of my debt: get a new job doing something in education (done); completely change my environment and daily rhythms to be more healthful and mindful (done); listen to the new rhythms to figure out what to do about grad school (done); get into grad school (done). Now I just have to remain employed (ideally while doing a good job changing an institution which changes lives), learn enough to actually carry with me past grad school, and figure out what the hell is after grad school. Completely unexpectedly, and certainly because of these changes, I also met someone amazing who is already helping me to do just that.
The best part about being with someone who truly challenges me is the feeling of being stretched. It’s wonderful in the same way a good morning stretch after physically working hard the previous day is wonderful and invigorating. It’s extraordinary how being with this person – really being WITH him in physical, mental, and emotional ways, for extended periods of time – raises my awareness that my own experiences can never possibly be enough to span the distance, spiritually. I know that I must let go of everything – trust – and be truly humble in seeking to understand. But no matter how much I let go, the tether stretches, I’m still connected to my experiences, and inevitably I’m pulled back into their confinement. But I’m stretched!
On the other hand, I’ve been stretched way too much on the professional side of things. I’m all saggy. It’s exciting and beginning to be inspiring to have leaders who seem to “get it,” but I’ve been acting like a one-woman bungee cord at work for too long now. My elasticity is shot. I’m praying that my kinetic energy will be restored, somehow. But perhaps that’s how it will be for a while. Maybe I just need to adjust to a new, unfamiliar source of energy. Inspiration? So far, it feels great.
1. to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence.
2. to produce or arouse (a feeling, thought, etc.).
3. to fill or affect with a specified feeling, thought, etc.
4. to influence or impel: Competition inspired her to greater efforts.
5. to animate, as an influence, feeling, thought, or the like, does.
6. to communicate or suggest by a divine or supernatural influence.
7. to guide or control by divine influence.
8. to prompt or instigate (utterances, acts, etc.) by influence, without avowal of responsibility.
9. to give rise to, bring about, cause, etc.
10. to take (air, gases, etc.) into the lungs in breathing; inhale.
11. Archaic .
a.to infuse (breath, life, etc.) by breathing (usually fol. by into ).
b. to breathe into or upon.
I need to study. It’s so hard to make myself get the notebook out and do the work when there’s so much waiting to be read. But I know that I can’t NOT do this, I’ve been trying not to do this for years now, and there’s no escape.
I was stuck in an in-between: I know way too much to be a subservient administrative cog or to be content stifled by ignorance around me; but I don’t know enough to be truly competent (or confident) doing anything else. Unlike most of my classmates, I don’t want this MBA to make more money. As far as money, I just want to make enough to live comfortably, perhaps contribute to raising a family someday, and take care of myself in my old age if I make it that long. What I REALLY want is to “make the world a better place” but I don’t know what the hell that means yet. I just know that I wasn’t in a position to do it without a firm grasp of really nerdy business concepts, some solid credentials from a strong, well-known school, and a wide network of future contacts for when I eventually do figure it out.
I need a new “list.” I’ve been just taking life as it came for 2 years now, and accomplished everything on the limited but complicated “list” I made once I paid all of my debt: get a new job doing something in education (done); completely change my environment and daily rhythms to be more healthful and mindful (done); listen to the new rhythms to figure out what to do about grad school (done); get into grad school (done). Now I just have to remain employed (ideally while doing a good job changing an institution which changes lives), learn enough to actually carry with me past grad school, and figure out what the hell is after grad school. Completely unexpectedly, and certainly because of these changes, I also met someone amazing who is already helping me to do just that.
The best part about being with someone who truly challenges me is the feeling of being stretched. It’s wonderful in the same way a good morning stretch after physically working hard the previous day is wonderful and invigorating. It’s extraordinary how being with this person – really being WITH him in physical, mental, and emotional ways, for extended periods of time – raises my awareness that my own experiences can never possibly be enough to span the distance, spiritually. I know that I must let go of everything – trust – and be truly humble in seeking to understand. But no matter how much I let go, the tether stretches, I’m still connected to my experiences, and inevitably I’m pulled back into their confinement. But I’m stretched!
On the other hand, I’ve been stretched way too much on the professional side of things. I’m all saggy. It’s exciting and beginning to be inspiring to have leaders who seem to “get it,” but I’ve been acting like a one-woman bungee cord at work for too long now. My elasticity is shot. I’m praying that my kinetic energy will be restored, somehow. But perhaps that’s how it will be for a while. Maybe I just need to adjust to a new, unfamiliar source of energy. Inspiration? So far, it feels great.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Nexus
[nek-suh s]
1) a means of connection; tie; link
2) a connected series or group
3) the core or center, as of a matter or situation
4) Cell Biology . a specialized area of the cell membrane involved in intercellular communication and adhesion.
I give up. I can't resist the temptation to start my own blog any longer. I was toying with the idea during my last "life-interchange" in 2008, but then I got too busy. Who's to say I won't, again, but then again a blog could also help me keep my head in one place. And no-one has to read it if I don't want them to...or if they don't want to.
Anyway, I seem to be at a kind of nexus of the varied experiences in my life: all of the facets of life and academia I've kept compartmentalized are quickly coming together and interacting in new and exciting ways.
Long-term personal growth and development has been a sort of backstage-whispering influence on most of the choices I've made since graduating from college, but this year it takes center stage. I was just accepted to the graduate program I've been teasing around in my mind for almost a decade. I went from teasing to earnest effort in 2008 and especially this spring 2010. The application process was a re-awakener of sleeping pieces of me and pieces I didn't know existed. I'd never bombed anything as miserably as I did the GMAT the first time I took it, never felt that my future was riding on my performance at this one specific task. I was shaking! It turned out to be the best possible thing, a wake-up call that buckled me down in a way I could never have motivated in myself. This will be the largest, riskiest investment I've ever made. The house doesn't count because I can sell it and recoup, at worst, 2/3 what I paid for it; this immaterial 2-year degree will cost about half of my house's purchase price and will only recoup what I can make of it. I've tried in every possible way to NOT get this degree but, like a magic forest, my life's paths have all led to this place. This nexus. So here I go.
The job which has contributed two years of incredible turbulence to all other realms of my life shows signs of smoothing out significantly into a semblance of normalcy. A few weeks of greatly slowed-down pace have renewed my mind and hopefully my ability to focus. A fantastically easy relationship with someone who I find attractive, interesting, entertaining, challenging, inspiring, and comforting (and who apparently has a reciprocal attraction of some nature) has taken the place of a gnawingness that has always been there. Like unexpectedly regaining feeling and function in a paralyzed limb, I haven't been quite sure what to do with it, except perhaps to poke it to feel it feeling me poking it, move it without general purpose to enjoy the movement, and test its limits. It's still tender and new, and I'm still not quite sure what to do with it. Its very existence is reassuring.
It's the sort of peaceful time when, in the past, I had confident expectation that an anvil was going to fall out of the sky and smash the peace into smithereens, but so far the peace has a gravity that's just attracting more peace and no anvils.
So I'm giving in to the urge to document on a blog. From this nexus I'll be learning and growing in entirely new ways during the coming years, and it might be nice to look back on my experiences as I've enjoyed looking back on those of others.
The blog name, by the way, is a line from one of my favorite David Gray songs.
1) a means of connection; tie; link
2) a connected series or group
3) the core or center, as of a matter or situation
4) Cell Biology . a specialized area of the cell membrane involved in intercellular communication and adhesion.
I give up. I can't resist the temptation to start my own blog any longer. I was toying with the idea during my last "life-interchange" in 2008, but then I got too busy. Who's to say I won't, again, but then again a blog could also help me keep my head in one place. And no-one has to read it if I don't want them to...or if they don't want to.
Anyway, I seem to be at a kind of nexus of the varied experiences in my life: all of the facets of life and academia I've kept compartmentalized are quickly coming together and interacting in new and exciting ways.
Long-term personal growth and development has been a sort of backstage-whispering influence on most of the choices I've made since graduating from college, but this year it takes center stage. I was just accepted to the graduate program I've been teasing around in my mind for almost a decade. I went from teasing to earnest effort in 2008 and especially this spring 2010. The application process was a re-awakener of sleeping pieces of me and pieces I didn't know existed. I'd never bombed anything as miserably as I did the GMAT the first time I took it, never felt that my future was riding on my performance at this one specific task. I was shaking! It turned out to be the best possible thing, a wake-up call that buckled me down in a way I could never have motivated in myself. This will be the largest, riskiest investment I've ever made. The house doesn't count because I can sell it and recoup, at worst, 2/3 what I paid for it; this immaterial 2-year degree will cost about half of my house's purchase price and will only recoup what I can make of it. I've tried in every possible way to NOT get this degree but, like a magic forest, my life's paths have all led to this place. This nexus. So here I go.
The job which has contributed two years of incredible turbulence to all other realms of my life shows signs of smoothing out significantly into a semblance of normalcy. A few weeks of greatly slowed-down pace have renewed my mind and hopefully my ability to focus. A fantastically easy relationship with someone who I find attractive, interesting, entertaining, challenging, inspiring, and comforting (and who apparently has a reciprocal attraction of some nature) has taken the place of a gnawingness that has always been there. Like unexpectedly regaining feeling and function in a paralyzed limb, I haven't been quite sure what to do with it, except perhaps to poke it to feel it feeling me poking it, move it without general purpose to enjoy the movement, and test its limits. It's still tender and new, and I'm still not quite sure what to do with it. Its very existence is reassuring.
It's the sort of peaceful time when, in the past, I had confident expectation that an anvil was going to fall out of the sky and smash the peace into smithereens, but so far the peace has a gravity that's just attracting more peace and no anvils.
So I'm giving in to the urge to document on a blog. From this nexus I'll be learning and growing in entirely new ways during the coming years, and it might be nice to look back on my experiences as I've enjoyed looking back on those of others.
The blog name, by the way, is a line from one of my favorite David Gray songs.
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