misalignment

I am feeling better tonight, not sure why. I woke up this morning feeling fairly depressed, the usual stuff, but throughout the day the fog lifted. I am hoping this persists, but I feel as if I'm at the whim of my moods right now. Much of my life is in place right now, and I am content with so many parts of it--but there are still a couple things misaligned, and I think I know what I need to do to get those things back on track. I just need to do them.

damp

I can't sleep.

I really thought I was going to be better, but I have to admit I'm back to where I was a couple of weeks ago. How the hell did I end up like this? How did I end up so disappointed in myself, thinking so little of myself? I feel like I have made so many wrong turns in life and now I'm so far off course that there's no way I can escape from a life of mediocrity. This may not be true, of course, but this is how it feels. I don't understand why.

I feel dead at the core. I want to just push myself, just start getting things done, just try to turn things around! I'm trying to light a fire inside of me but the wood is damp. It won't catch.

And so I'm lying in bed, trying to hide from the world under the sheets, hoping that when I wake up I'll feel better, but somehow knowing it won't be.

I have got to do something. But I don't know what to do anymore. At moments like this, I don't know what could possibly make things better.

But they will get better, and hopefully when I'm thinking more positively I can do something.

separatism

How did I come to feel so isolated from people who are dear to me?

It's my own doing.

My community now consists of a number of one-on-one connections, spread out all over the country (the world, in a couple of cases). This isn't really a community, though, is it? But it is what I have, and I should probably lean more on those connections, which in fact do mean quite a lot to me (though I don't think you'd know it from the amount of time I put into them).

I wish there was a place I could go where a group of people I knew incredibly well and felt incredibly comfortable with was hanging out, and I could just sink into the comfort of their support. I suppose a girlfriend would fit the bill, too, but I'd probably rather have the group--I don't like the idea of making one person into my community, since I think it puts too much strain on that single connection. In a group, the support is spread out across a number of connections, no one strand is overstrained. Of course, it'd be best to have both, wouldn't it?

Let's talk about why I don't have a girlfriend.
Actually, let's not.
Because I think that, when it comes right down to it, love is a mystery. You find it if you find it, you don't if you don't. Love can be (love IS) a hugely important part of life, but it does not occur exclusively in a romantic relationship. Family, friends, even work can be sources of love, if your heart is in them.

I want to love my life. Every bit of it. I think this is possible, or nearly possible, at least.

But you've got to know yourself. You've got to know what you love.

vision

I do not feel that I have found a community here in Illinois, which I think was a key to my happiness in Pittsburgh and in Tampa. I don't blame Illinois for this--I blame only myself. I think that in college (and even in my Master's) it was easier to fall into a community. In college, I had the dorm, and I had student organizations (especially Student Life, which was probably the formative experience of my college career). In my Master's, I had the Religious Studies Department and, nearer to the end, I unexpectedly fell into a sort of community at a local Starbucks. Here in Illinois, I have found a community neither in my department nor through student organizations. I don't think there's much that I can do about the department, especially at this point. We're all getting along now, but I don't think we're going to gel into a community, at least not one that I'm a part of. As for student organizations, I have made the mistake of not getting involved with a meaningful group (like Student Life was for me in college) here, even though it's obvious that this kind of involvement has been key to my happiness at other places. I did make an attempt to get involved here, near the end of my first year and beginning of my second, by working with the grad student committee of the Student Senate--I was even supposed to be the chair my second year. But I wasn't really invested in it, and didn't think the mission of the committee was that clear, and ended up letting that go. Perhaps I should have tried harder to stay involved there. But, really, I should have been more vigilant about finding a worthwhile group. I had a chance to get involved in something at the beginning of the semester--the Intergroup Dialogue group. I was in the class they sponsor, which could have led to work with a dialogue facilitation course on religion this coming Spring. This kind of work is dear to my heart, but I dropped the class, because I decided I only wanted one class, and the Social Philosophy class won out. I see now that this was a mistake. I should have taken both classes. The Dialogue group might've been just the kind of thing that would have invigorated me. The Social Philosophy class invigorated me intellectually and personally, but I think the Dialogue class would have invigorated me interpersonally. So this Spring, when I return from break, I think I'm going to try to get involved in something. I'm going to try to find a group that's working on something that I value, and I am hoping that, through this group, I can meet people with common interests and engage in the kind of work that helps me feel worthwhile. This is all part of me being more honest with myself about the kinds of things that make me deeply happy and then really pursuing those things and not letting myself chicken out, which is what I always always often often do.

I have also
been thinking
about a vision.

I realize that I have a lot of interesting (to me, anyway) ideas about religion, about education, about their intersection. But they don't really hold together into a vision, a comprehensive way of looking at religion and education. Perhaps I think that public schools should include space for students to explore issues of meaning--what their lives are about. This would include having them learning about different religious and non-religious worldviews in order that they could find a worldview that resonates with their lives. That seems authentic. Fine, fine, but what's the vision of religion and education that this idea relies on? What am I saying about religion if students can just come to identify with a particular one? What am I saying about schooling? What are the visions here? I think it would be beneficial to outline an ideal vision of religion and education--a sort of utopia--and then I could develop concrete steps for moving from our current situation to the utopian situation.

Keep thinking.

adrift

I devalue my own life. I always want to be living others' lives. I think that others are better than me and I feel like I have somehow screwed up or I could be as good as them. I'm not saying this to get sympathy, and I know it's not even really true, but this is how I feel sometimes.

I've been on antidepressants for the past week and a half, and while I can't be sure that it's the medicine making the difference, I've certainly felt better. I haven't been needlessly worrying as much, and I haven't been making myself feel guilty about not doing X or not being Y enough. I feel like they've brought me to the point where I can think clearly about other things besides my "problems" for once.

That all being said, I still don't feel quite right about things. I would like to be satisfied--really satisfied--with who I am and what I'm doing. Not complacent, just satisfied, at least to the point where I'm not always thinking I should be thinking and acting differently, comparing myself to others. I want my life to flow--right now I may actually have too much flexibility, and I feel adrift, directionless.

Stay hungry.