The Navel-Gazing Post

This post starts in 2001 when a friend gave me a journal for Christmas. My first entry was on Christmas Eve and ever since, December 24 has been marked in my mind as a day for taking stock. I don't always write my yearly inventory down on the exact day, but it's always what I'm aiming for. This year I find myself making pre-emptive gestures toward that inventory.

Picture a river in your mind. Picture a wide path of stepping stones going across it. Now imagine that not all of the stones are stable enough to bear weight and there's no way of knowing which will hold and which will give. Now picture me in the middle of the river.

With every year that goes by, we face a series of choices and changes throughout it. This year has been a very eventful one for me. I had a boyfriend, got a fiancee, then had neither. I was a student, I applied to become a teacher, and got the TA. Both are good changes. Both have significantly changed my plans. Here I am, in need of a new plan, and I'm no longer even sure what my priorities are, but sure that they too need to change. Balance is important and it's something I don't currently have.

Meeting up with my friend yesterday emphasized that. Both of us are struggling with this idea of balance. She's having a rough time with school, I'm having a rough time with certain things outside of school. If you put the two of us together, I think you'd get a balanced person, but with physics and all, that's not a viable option right now. Which leaves us each to figure it out for ourselves. Next semester, my friend has decided to stop working and only be a student. She's got a plan to balance herself. I don't.

I have my reasons for what I do, and I like to think they're good reasons. I just have to admit that I get carried away. There's a reason I've got a cold again, just a couple months after my last one, and why it's taking such a toll. I tend to define things by what is possible instead of what is a good idea - Like, it's possible to work full time between two jobs and take 18 credit hours, but, as evidenced by the illness (followed by a vertigo spell) that knocked me flat right before/during finals week during my last semester as an undergrad, not the best idea. Still, I find myself in a similar situation right now. The lesson obviously didn't sink in. So, while I overload myself with school and work, other aspects of my life get neglected. In part, I think overloading gives me an excuse to avoid those other aspects.

On my writing blog, I said that this month my goal was to slow down. With that in mind, I managed to wrangle myself out of two Wednesday night shifts at the bar this month. A small step, but one made because of my goal. Then I talked about the strangeness of this week, a week off from school. I'm having to force myself to slow down even more and concentrate on doing things for myself this week. This is my second day "off," and I've managed to force myself to take my mind off of what I "should" be doing. Mostly. Being sick and having little energy for much beyond watching a lot of TV helps.

I'm over a month early for acconting for the year, but I'm in that mode of thought. It's all about priorities and the fact that mine usually align with doing what I think is the smart thing to do. I need to find a way to even out my priorities and find the balance between being smart and being brave.