Google it or ask Siri or use context clues to figure it out because it is real and it is happening.
I thought maybe I was experiencing senioritis or some form of final semester denial of responsibility process. I have been on this rollercoaster of feeling sad, feeling hopeful, feeling scared/anxious and feeling nothing. "Oh gosh," my subconscious yells to me in the wee hours of the night "is this what our life has become."
Once enamored with the thought of drowning my Saturday in a pile of Inside Higher Ed articles, I can barely get through an article about anything related to student development, higher ed or social justice (shh, don't tell anyone). I find myself skipping back and forth between pinterets, linkedin and facebook as if I'm on a spirit journey in search of the meaning of life. I literally can't do anything remotely productive. I have been told to apply for a job that I am genuinely interested and I simply can't get past the line "Dear FILL IN." My brain is tired.
I am beginning to realize that I haven't been so intensely and intently focused on one topic the way I have been in graduate school. Is it bad that I feel a little tired of talking about developing the next generation of leaders before I've even felt incompetent in my first job. I am feeling a little nostalgia for the person I was before graduate school. I had depth, I knew what was going on in the world, I didn't cry every day, I ate well balanced meals. My friends all had different interests and I wasn't trapped in a two year process with people who I cared deeply about but who I knew way too much about it and I was literally tired of. I feel like I want to just crawl out of my existence and go do something else.
I'm not sure what act of God will push me into momentum again. I have to keep giving myself pep talks just to get through the job search process "okay, do it even though you don't feel like it." "Okay, you can eat a cookie after you finish..."
So I guess...the point of this post is...I'm scared of the future? I used to be a very religious person but that waned and almost disappeared as a rounded the home base of my college career. Yet, the remnants of my religious upbringing still wriggle themselves to the surface now and then. I was reminded of this last night when I woke up to Joel Olsteen on the television. My instinct was to turn away as his teeth tend to give me nightmares about being eaten alive. But he started talking about the difference between living our lives out of faith and living our lives out of fear. I think something within me sighed and felt a tinge of relief because I put down the remote and just listened. I came away being reminded that we project our lives into reality, although some to most things are undoubtedly out of our control. But I really needed to dial back the anxiety station blaring in my head because I was paralyzing myself from moving forward. I was literally shocked into doing nothing because I am realizing I have no control over what comes next and it is literally scaring the fruit snacks out of me.
I am also just feeling pathetic and maybe a little shallow which reminds me that I need more in my life than my job and all this student affairs stuff. I need literature and art and good food and people. These all consuming processes of looking for jobs, finishing my comps, finishing grad school and fantasizing about the elusive night of sleep have really reminded me that there is truly more to life.
I have to remember to search for that too.
Until next time,
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