honesty

I don't necessarily expect you to read all of this (it's long), but if you're interested...

How often are we honest with ourselves about who we are? I've started reading this book called Care of the Soul, by Thomas Moore (not the saint, who I think was Thomas More--this guy's a psychotherapist), and one of his main points is that we need to embrace all elements of our personality. We often think that there are things that are 'wrong' with us, things that we need to 'fix,' but this attitude doesn't get us anywhere, because the things that are 'wrong' are things that are fixed into our personality. We are trying to eliminate who we are when we try to fix ourselves. Maybe we need to look at how we can grow by acknowledging the things that we're trying to fix. What are the bad things trying to tell us about who we are?

So let me be honest. A good place to start. "I" statements.

I am not always a good friend, not because I don't care about my friends, not because I don't love them, but because I don't always give them the time and attention they deserve.

I do not like when people are better than me at things that I see myself as being good at. There are certain things that are "my things," and I want to be the best at those things.

I desperately want someone who I think is amazing to fall in love with me. And yet, when it happens, the satisfaction I derive from it is often short-lived. The perfect relationship I have in mind can probably never happen.

I want to feel like every second of my life is well-lived. I want to live life to the hilt. When I am in a good mood, I feel like I am doing this. When I am in a bad mood, I feel like I am wasting my life away.

I like that I can make people laugh. One of my favorite things to do is to laugh with people, though there aren't many people that I actually think are funny.

I am disdainful of people who are pretentious.

I am disdainful of things that don't seem geared towards making actual change in the world (though I recognize at the same time that I've done little to make actual change, aside from the various leadership and teaching roles I've had in my life).

Remember when I said I want someone who is amazing to fall in love with me? Well I don't think I'm the best at picking out the people who are amazing. I've gotten a lucky break, in that most (all, really) of my friends are amazing, really wonderful people, who love me, and whom I love. But when I scan a room, or a coffee shop, and I observe who jumps out at me, who seems interesting--I'm not sure if it's always the people who actually are interesting. People are interesting, I think, for their personalities, not for their looks, and when you're scanning a room, it's hard to pick up on anything beyond looks (though you can perhaps get a hint of their personality through their comportment, and I think there's something to this).

I need a tight community of friends to be as happy as I can be. I'm past the point where I regret leaving Tampa, where I had this, but I do wonder if what I've got out of being in C-U was worth it, and I do wonder if in fact I would've been better off getting the PhD in Communication from USF, focusing on interreligious dialogue, and staying with my loving community.

I don't actually think many people are that interesting. I think a lot of people are attractive, but I don't think many people are interesting. I do think I have a compassion for people, but this doesn't translate into genuine interest. (If this makes sense.)

I want to be an expert in something--religion and education, spirituality and education, world religions, interreligious dialogue, philosophy of the good life--but I've not yet been willing to invest the time it would take to actually become an expert at these things. I think right now I have the foundation to become an expert in a number of areas--I can understand advanced readings in a decent number of fields--but I've got to start doing that reading. if I want to be an expert, I have to immerse myself in something. Live in a field. Absorb it into my life. Become absorbed in it. This is what I should start doing in May, after my qualifying exam.

Recently, I've met a couple of women and had conversations with them, and after the conversations, I've thought to myself, that's exactly the kind of person I want to 'be with.' These women weren't a lot alike, really, but they were dynamic, lively, spirited. That's what I like. And I like that in my friends, too. People who have a sense of passion about something, anything--people who seem passionate about some aspect of the world, and because of that passion, they're passionate about life. I like myself best when I have this passion--my friend SD has helped me to realize that there are times when I am clearly on fire about something, times when I am driven by something beyond me--and there are times when the spark is dampened, when I am not actually alive.

Because I like myself (and therefore life) best when I am filled with passion, it would make sense (wouldn't it?) to figure out how to cultivate that passion. This is essentially what I've been doing since September or October. I think I've cleared away most of the influences in my life that were holding me back, and now it's a matter of fertilizing the influences that can push me forward. The question now is, how can I redirect the parts of my life that I have control over to cultivate that passion?

And I think I know. I think I've got it pretty much figured out.

But now I actually have to DO it. And this is the trick. I think my introspective bent is finally paying off for me, because I know myself pretty well (though not fully), and I know what makes me content. But my introspective bent also keeps me from actually doing anything--I've never been a person of action. Or this has always been the hangup for me. I have tons of great ideas, but I don't always pull them off.

(I'm listening to Yo La Tengo right now, and you know, I really think everybody should hear some of their songs. I want to make a CD's worth of what I think are their Greatest Hits. In fact, I'm going to do this. And I might send it out to people.)

So why don't I pull things off? Because I have this inherent laziness. No, no, that's not it, entirely. It's that I have a hard time self-motivating. That's really the problem, I think. I was talking to my mom yesterday, about my problems with motivation, my depression, etc., and she said, what happened to you? In high school, you used to be such a hard worker and you never had any problems! And you know what happened? My life got more and more structureless over the years. In high school, things were regimented--go to class from 7:30 to 3, do band stuff, go home, do your homework, repeat for 4 years. Then, college, which is semi-regimented. You learn to cut some corners, but there's still fairly regular work and fairly regular classes. So I didn't have much of a problem, because I still didn't have to be self-motivated, though in the areas of my life that were more self-motivated, I didn't accomplish everything I wanted to. So in my role as an RA and a CA, in Student Life, I had lots of ideas that never came to fruition because self-motivaton was required. The ideas weren't "due." I wasn't really held accountable. And everybody still thought I was doing a great job--and maybe I was, though I knew I could be doing an even better job. A wonderful job, an extraordinary job, rather than just a great job.

Then grad school, which (at least in the humanities, I think, and maybe the social sciences, too) has far less structure than undergrad. Fewer classes, virtually no homework (just final papers), and an incredibly flexible schedule. So I ended up being at USF for 3 years (I could've done it in 2), I didn't finish my thesis till I got here--I drifted, because I had to be more self-motivated. And it didn't get any better here.

And now I'm entering the least structured part of my academic career--my dissertation. I will have virtually no structure over the next 2 years. I'll be teaching and sitting in on some classes, which'll provide some structure, but my only real 'assignments' will be teaching, grading, and writing a dissertation. And nobody will be breathing down my neck to get this stuff done. So I'd better figure out my issues with self-motivation now, hadn't I?

Now I don't think I'm the only one with this problem, and I'm not beating myself up about it (at least, not right now), but here's the bottom line (finally): if I'm going to do the kinds of things with my life that I want to do, then I am going to have to become more self-motivated, which largely means I'm going to have to devote more time to my 'work.' Which largely means I need to reorganize my daily life. Which largely means I have to get an earlier start and regular sleep.

The story of the past 10 years for me has been this: I've done a good job at most of what I've tried. But I want to do a wonderful job. And I know I can. But I've got to make some changes to make this happen. I've been saying this since September or October, and I think, since then, I've been focusing in on how to make it happen, on what I need to do. The course is laid. Now I need to engage.

And I don't want you to think that I just want to do a great job with my work--I want to do a great job with my friends, too, which I haven't been doing. It's all a matter, I think, of reorganizing my days so that I spend less time doing the things that don't make me content and more time doing the things that do. If I know that I am more content when i am getting work done every day, then I should be sure I'm getting work done every day. If I know that I am more content when I am having a good conversation with someone every day, then I need to be sure to try to have a good conversation (or email exchange, or interaction) every day. If certain kinds of music inspire me more than others, then listen to that music. If certain kinds of reading inspires me, then do that kind of reading. And if certain people, certain songs, certain books, certain activities drag me down, then I should try to avoid those things, if I can. i don't think we can do what we really want to do every second of every day, but I think we can maximize it to the point where we can spend a great deal of our days doing what we really want to do. This isn't always easy, but we can do it.

I want to love 99% of my life.
I want life to grab me.
I want to feel engaged with the world.
I want to be surrounded by love by inspiration by passion not by negativity by cynicism by deadness.

So would all my friends please move here? Let's start a charter school and teach during the day and talk all night. Let's feel so alive together.

pendulum resting

This past week I've been bouncing back and forth between depression and contentment. There have been incredibly good moments and then stretches of time where that old hopeless/pointless feeling has returned.

But I don't have that much to say about it tonight, because I know exactly what's causing it. Or I think I know, anyway: the same thing that's been causing it for years. The problem is that I'm not living my life the way I deeply want to live it, and I know how to re-organize my life to bring it more in line with my 'vision,' but for some reason I cannot bring myself to do it. In other words, the problem is that I know what needs to be done but then don't actually do it. And I've known for quite some time.

So.
Do it, then.

And remember that the things that I think will make me happy (and maybe do, in the very short-term) are not the same things that really will make me happy (in the long-term). And that being happy means going against my instincts a bit, because look where certain of my instincts have gotten me.