Anybody?

My rule for the rest of the summer (a.k.a. the few weeks I have left to draft essays for my thesis before school starts): I will not panic. So far, my approach to thesis writing is the same as my approach to most important and complex things requiring careful thinking mixed with bursts of creativity. Things which will ultimately be evaluated based on their quality. My pattern: thinking about big things that need to get done, deciding that it’s really unlikely that I can ever do them justice in the time allotted, procrastinating because the potential for failure or mediocrity is just too great, making some un-thoughtful, blind stabs at work that I end up tossing, feeling confirmed in my fears of mediocrity because my panic-induced attempts have turned out poorly, spending a lot of time moping about the fact that I'm not getting anything done, making lists of ways to start getting things done, worrying more about how badly things could all turn out if I don't hurry up and finally do something, repeat, repeat, repeat.

And then: in the last little smidgen of an inch of time remaining, I buckle down and rapidly turn out exactly the necessary amount of work, and whatever I was supposed to do turns out just fine, or better. Just IMAGINE what would happen if I would use all of that time for thinking and daydreaming or playing or brainstorming or praying or pondering instead of worrying and mulling and psyching myself out.




PS: This post is not intended to be a pity party. I'm just thinking. And I'm assuming I'm not the only one out there like this. :) This emoticon welcomes you to Procrastination Nation.

When the living's easy

My brain is tired! My brain! I just started two posts that I then discarded when I decided they were stupid. One was about riding my bike to work. The other was a few delicious recipes. Both of them seemed like a waste of everyone's time after about thirty seconds of writing.

So, instead, what? I'll just say that I love this summer. I've never had such a free, uncommitted, easygoing summer before. Last summer was technically just as free time-wise, but I had just left the bank, and readjusting to a whole different style of life was still overwhelming.

This summer is different. I have loved reading on the front porch, waking up early and running, hanging out at coffee shops with my laptop and attempting to write (sometimes I've also hated that), checking out more books from the library than I could ever read, getting ice cream at The Scoop, biking to work, hanging out with high schoolers, watching Alias, reading and praying and being quiet in the morning times, writing articles about rodeos, and just having TIME to do whatever I want with.

When school starts again in September I know the stress and the pressure will be back, and I'll be short on sleep and generally unrelaxed until June. That's because I'm a perfectionist, not because my program is trying to beat me to a pulp. And it will be good for me in some ways and exhausting in others and it will all work out okay eventually. But I want to remember how restful (even though, honestly, I haven't been sleeping all that much) these few months have been, and how rejuvenating this time off has felt (even though this heat is trying to melt me). It feels good to love life.

Anniversary

I realized today that I completely forgot about my one year anniversary of quitting being a corporate drone. The last day of my five years at the bank was July 9, 2008. It is so funny that just one year later my whole old life seems like so long ago. Quitting my job was terrifying. I wanted to quit for years before I actually did it, and even after I gave my notice I kept doubting myself. Steadiness and security are pretty important to me. Trading my good-paying full time job (with benefits and 401k) for a not-so-good-paying part time job with no benefits, plus going back to school full time, seemed almost impossibly risky. I knew that I was doing the right thing, but I was really scared about what would happen.

I'm still a little worried about what's going to happen, because I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to do when I am officially a Master of Creative Writing next June. But I know for absolute sure that my frame of mind is infinitely better than it was before I started this whole irresponsible lifestyle. I love getting to experience summertime - reading outside at coffee shops, obsessing about summer salads, knowing I can go out of town for a week without it meaning that I won't be able to take a single day off at Christmas. There is flexibility and give in my life now; I'm busier than I was a year ago, but time can expand and collapse without regard to the boundaries of my old 8+ hour days of dissatisfying work. I still feel kind of ominously unsettled, but now it's because I want to be a good writer and I don't quite know how, instead of before, when it was because I wanted to live a fulfilling life, but couldn't do that with the job I was too scared to leave. I don't really know what I'm doing with my life, but I'm not disappointed with myself anymore.

Affirmation

I'm at Starbucks doing my "Sunday thing." I say that in quotes not because it's not Sunday--it is--but because I don't have a need for a Sunday thing anymore. I used to go to a coffee shop on Sunday afternoons with a book and my journal because I dreaded going back to work on Monday so much that I started to hate Sundays and needed to escape. I don't dread Mondays now. I don't even work then, or on Fridays. Brad and I slept in on Friday (7:40--look who's living now!), and I went on a very long run, and we went to Costco (glamorous!) and got Frosties on the way home. Life isn't fancy and it's still not all that I want it to be, but there's a sense of freedom and spontaneity that's been lacking since college, minus vacations and weeks spent in Mexico.

I always knew, since my days at Adams Temporaries, that an office environment wasn't for me. I knew since my first month living in Spokane that a set 8-to-5 schedule was wrong for me, that the jam-packed days at Western were full but varied and that it was good for who I am--I loved bouncing between nannying and going to class and writing papers and hanging out with Brad and friends and roommates, going to the INN, playing music--the unpredictable but often familiar rhythm of that life suited me. I wrote and read. I listened. I laughed a lot.

The last five years have been quite good and I have learned a lot about myself--who I am in a new place, what it means to be a wife, who I am in Christ (or at least a little part of that), what some of my strengths are, and what some of my weaknesses are too. I've developed new hobbies--loves, really--and built relationships and learned how much I love being a leader for youth ministry. But much of the last five years has simply confirmed things I've known about myself for a long time. I don't want to work in a corporate environment. I want a flexible schedule. I want to write. I'm organized and productive and can do a lot within a routine, but I'm also deeply creative.

I found some old journal entries from about 3 years ago that list what at the time I considered to be possible future careers: writer, editor, nutritionist, entrepreneur, ministry-related job. Essentially the same list I came up with this year when I decided to get serious about myself future-wise. God has shown me and reminded me, again and again, who I am and what I love and don't love--what makes me more and less myself or, as good old Oprah would say, what makes me my best self. All that's different now is that I'm using that knowledge to decide what to do with my time. Doing that has been surprisingly natural and good.

The very day I started work at First Pres, the end of my brief no-work hiatus, I received an email from the editor of a local publication asking me if I'd be interested in freelancing for them. Brad and I have an ongoing joke about the phrase "It's a God thing", because people often use it in such cheeseball ways, or about such trivial things that I just don't believe God would intercede in--anything from getting out of a traffic ticket to being at Wal-Mart at the very moment a new shipment of Mario Kart arrives. So, I semi jokingly asked Brad if he thought the email from the editor might, in fact, be a God thing--receiving it on the first working day of the new me seemed like more than total coincidence. Brad suggested that it might be better described as an affirmation, which I find really fitting. God has patiently and faithfully reminded me of who I am, and now that I'm taking some risks to become more like that person, he's affirming me, via the email, via the freedom I feel. I did hear his still, small voice over the years, often in myself, and since I heard it in myself I often ignored it. But now that I'm responding, so is God. It's nice.