Sunday night thoughts that are more connected than they appear to be:
1. I feel as though my life since June 2009 has been a study in human fallibility.
2. I tire of making mistakes.
3. I think LDS YSA need to become more proficient in and comfortable with taking social risks. And when I say social, I mostly mean dating.
4. If I am ever to work with small people again, I want them to be my own.
5. The clothes I design in my head are way better looking than anything I can buy.
6. I need to go on a spending moratorium.
7. Someone told me tonight it is very unlike me to be unhappy with my life. This person was right.
8. I believe place is far more important to happiness than most people think it is.
9. Maybe I am not as strong/creative/resilient/productive as I always believed I was.
10. One of the saddest things to me about singlehooddom is that I feel like some of my awesomeness is converted to some sort of deadweight loss, like if no one is there to appreciate it, it goes wasted.
11. Statements 9 and 10 contradict one another.
12. It is about to get reeeeeally hot in Miami. Like nuclear holocaust hot.
Concluding thought: There is a GBH quote on my mirror that says something like "I have come to realize that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves." I mostly agree, but only mostly. I don't want to talk about "you can choose to be happy in whatever situation you are in" because I am of the "if you don't like the situation you are in, change it" philosophy, not the "just be happy where you are" philosophy. I believe that my level of satisfaction of life influences many people, so if I complain about life as it is right now, it is partly because I don't have time to be there for people or to spontaneously serve people. I don't like that how full and exhausting my work and grad school schedule is inhibits me from living generously. I can't support people by attending their activities or commit to giving people rides or cleaning the chapel or taking a friend out for a treat if they had a bad day. I don't think that is entirely selfish to lament these things. I am not myself. I never want to be this busy or this emotionally/physically/spiritually leached ever again! My commitment to TforA is serious but really does it have crowd out everything else?
I feel frustrated.
There, Sav. Does putting it on the Internet make you feel better???
3 comments:
sav, you ARE "strong/creative/ resilient/productive!" you just have an incredibly DIFFICULT task at hand right now thats pushing you more than you're comfortable with. you will come out of this even MORE strong/creative/resilient/productive than you were when you went in. thats how we're built. trust me. it will end. hold on to those few sweet moments. keep your goal in focus and you'll get there. promise. you are loved wherever you go... even if those stinker students pretend not to ;)
i agree with camilla.
also, i would point you to sister beck's talk, which basically said this: as women, we will never be able to do everything we want to do. our hearts are too big for that to be true. so all we can do is ask for divine guidance to figure out what to prioritize today. sometimes it will be ourselves--there's nothing wrong with that. sometimes it will be a particular cause--there's nothing wrong with that. to feel as though you have to do everything perfectly all the time, or that you can do everything, be everything, say everything that you want to say is unrealistic.
that doesn't mean that we won't keep doing it.
also, you are in the first year of teaching. alone, on its own, that is a carnival of steep learning curve horrors. you are incredibly hard on yourself for someone who a) hasn't done this before; b) is doing this in an incredibly demanding environment; and c) isn't necessarily an expert in your field.
finally, balance is an act we will always being trying to achieve. the trials of trying to do it don't change--the circumstances just change. i think, if we realize that, it won't become so much a destination as it is a quest.
You are amazing, and amazingness should not be contstrained. I also agree that singledom makes it very difficult to feel validated, and also very hard to serve. You don't have a spouse, or children, or people at home to serve or who are responsible for serving you. You have to work, and make a living, and pay bills, and get an education, on top of looking very far outside yourself to serve. That is what I long for in family - they and the wonderfulness that accompanies them are at home. Not outside of it. It's very hard to remain selfless while single - you just have yourself.
So, I just joined in online whining with you. We whined together. :) Plus, also, I miss you, and missing you makes me whiney. Stay beautiful Savanna! Your amazingness is not wasted on me!
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