emergence

Large parts of the next two months will be spent climbing out of the huge hole I have dug for myself over the past year and a half.

I had a breakdown this past weekend, during which I felt worthless, hopeless, and meaningless, and basically everything else seemed this way, too. I felt like I couldn't do my life anymore.

After talking to a friend while I was doing my laundry and then breaking down a little more with my mom on the phone, and then spending time with a couple of friends at night, I started to feel better; and then I was out of town Sunday and Monday, which helped immensely. Now I'm back in C-U, and I'm feeling a little more centered, though not totally balanced yet.

As anyone who's been reading this knows, the past few weeks have been topsy-turvy for me. An emotional crisis triggered a sort of re-evaluation of my life, and I think it culminated (I hope this was the culmination) this past weekend. I realized that I was not happy with where my life was at.

Now part of this, I know, was due to the fact that I was feeling overwhelmed. I've let a lot of work pile up, and I was putting intense pressure on myself to get all that work done immediately, which wasn't possible. When I get in these overwhelmed moods, I tend to freeze, I tend to shut down--making it difficult to get anything done, which of course just makes me feel overwhelmed.

So part of what I have to do is just start getting things done. I have to start setting reasonable goals and accomplishing them and just finish up everything I've started over the past two years. If I can do that this semester, which I think I can, then I can go into next semester in great shape, with only my qualifying exams and my dissertation proposal to worry about. I'm excited about this, because I'm excited about the direction my dissertation is headed (my advisor approved of the general idea I outlined in one of my previous posts here, so it looks like I'm going to be able to write my dissertation on a topic that genuinely interests me). I'm also excited about this because I've decided to live in Chicago next semester and audit a class or two at U. of Chicago while focusing on all of the above. So next semester has the potential to be great for me, if I can just get caught up this semester.

The other part of what I have to do is be realistic about what my professional goals are. It is important to me that I enjoy my work, that I find it meaningful (not everyone feels like they have to find it meaningful, and I wonder if that's a problem), and it hit me this past weekend (while talking to my mom, who knows me better than anyone else) that I'm not all that interested in being primarily a scholar, a researcher. I think to be a scholar you have to love scholarly work for its own sake, and I'm not so sure I do. I like learning, reading, writing, when I feel like it's serving a purpose that's meaningful to me personally, but I don't like those things for their own sake. In other words, I don't like learning just to learn. I like learning when I know I'll be working with people in a way where I can apply that learning. For instance, I like learning when I know I'm going to be teaching about what I'm learning about. The key here, I think, is that it's so important to me to work with people. When I look back on the activities in my life in which I've felt the most alive, it tends to be those through which I was able to work with others--Student Life (when I was an RA), the Religious Studies Club at USF, and teaching. The upshot of all of this is that I think I'll need to focus my job search on professorial positions at liberal arts colleges or universities that aren't so research-oriented. I think I'd rather teach more every semester with less pressure to publish and present in academic outlets (and perhaps more freedom to publish in popular outlets) than teach less every semester but have more pressure to publish and present academically. This is just what I prefer, and what would make me happier.

And yet I feel like, for quite some time, I have been trying to live up to standards that other people have pushed on me--standards that I didn't necessarily want, but that I thought I should want. I thought I should try to be a big-name professor at a big-time university, because this seemed like as high as I could go in academia; but why aim for this if it isn't even what I want? Why not aim for something that I would love so that I would excel in it? I'd rather be an excellent professor at a liberal arts college than a mediocre professor at a research-oriented university.

I feel sort of liberated. I know what I have to do these last 2 months of the semester and I feel like I'm on track to be out of here by May 2008 and I think I'll be able to get the sort of job I want when I'm done. I've got to get back into the stream of life, because I think I've spent too much time lately in my own head, which means I haven't been focusing quite enough on friends, work, and the world. I want my life to feel right, where it just flows on a current of contentment, even as I pass through rapids from time to time.

Thank you, Brenbren, for your comments, and thank you everyone for your emails, calls, tea conversations, etc. Having supportive friends, who will stick with me even when I'm a bit withdrawn, has been such a help. I owe some people emails and calls, I know, and they are coming, I promise.

Finally, let me say this: I have realized that some of the distress I've felt the past few days, few weeks, is due to a sense of loss. Loss pains me more than anything else. The problem is, I often feel loss over things that I never actually had. I create these fantasies involving people and the future that don't have a basis in how things are or even in how I actually want things to be. I felt loss (and so felt incredibly sad) when I was talking to my mom and she was telling me that maybe I should just try to teach at a liberal arts college--this is where she could picture me. And I felt like I was giving up on something, a dream of being a big-name professor. But then I realized that I was giving up on a dream that was never really mine in the first place.

So what are my dreams?
What matters to me?
What do I really identify with?

I think if I can answer these questions, and organize my life around these answers, then I will be as fulfilled as I can be, or at least on the right track.

And you know what? I already know the answers. I have been spending so much time lately trying to "figure things out," but in fact I've known the answers all along. I've known what counts to me. It's just a matter of being honest with myself about all of this. It is just a matter of stilling myself to the point where the answers emerge.