today has been quite the mini-roller coaster. well, this weekend leading into yesterday and today, i should say.
on friday i left with holly and camille for the contra dancing weekend at table rock state park; it was really wonderful and so refreshingly different than any culture i have experienced in a long time. i will never fully subscribe to it, so i'll never be completely comfortable in it, but i feel like i am so much better able to bring myself to it now that i have a basic knowledge of how to move on the dance floor.
apart from learning to dance, though, last weekend was an intense, immersion-style reminder of where i come from. not that my family is so alternative, but the culture in which i grew up was very much so. these people that come contra dancing are not concerned with the four-year-track. they're not worried about gpas or money or the pride they've invested in this constructed, student identity. not to say they don't struggle with some of those things, but they aren't consumed by them like four-year, on-campus college students can be.
i've realized that i fall in between the two worlds. i am not moved by the completely alternative life, but i am suppressed by the accepted, standard track. i belong somewhere in the middle and i have no idea what that means for my future.
heh : )
i wonder if this is real life, and that's why it feels so different from what has been. everything feels big, you know? and it's wonderful, because i have places to put my heart and it's being pulled and stretched, but i think i am profoundly overwhelmed. and how does one recover from that? can you? or do you just take it and move forward.
i'm starting to think that getting a psyd in counseling rather than a phd is the way to go for me. it's not so academic and i think will really play to my strengths and goals. the more i think about research-based grad school, the more my stomach turns and the more stressed out i get. and it's not the stressed out that turns into motivation and a little anxiety, it's the kind of stressed out that turns into internalized depression.
i'm thinking that's a red flag.
anyway. i think i moved forward a little bit today - i'm starting to figure my life out bit by bit. i went contra dancing last night with camille and holly and it was so wonderful. dancing is just such a healthy outlet for my physical nature. another thing that's really refreshing: it's not about coupling up, it's about dancing. you dance with whomever (whoever? whomever?) asks you and you meet people and you make friends and there is no expectation for anything beyond that. people aren't husband shopping, and they're not even really boyfriend shopping. it feels so much more relaxed.
*sigh*
it made me really happy. i really do love being single when i'm in an atmosphere that is conducive to embracing it.
i also have been able to process a lot the past few days. i've had a lot of intense discussions with my parents about the generation gap and modern culture and how different we are from them. it's been really good - when i say intense i don't mean tense, i mean deep and moving. i've felt a lot these past couple of weeks, and it's actually really nice to have conversations that catch me in that part of my throat. i feel real and alive and awake.
i am also so, so confused. there is a part of me that feels absolutely crippled by the rest of my life looming over my head, but part of the crippling is my fault; i keep postponing the process of figuring it out because i'm afraid of it. i was telling tarryn today that deciding what i'm doing for graduate school is a huge commitment to myself and my path. i've always had someone else's path to follow, and i'm not sure i want to commit to myself that assuredly yet. i'm not sure i'm stable enough to commit to. what if i betray myself and change my mind? what if i get there (there being [insert grad school]) and realize i've completely misread myself?
the thing about that is this: i know what i want, and i know what i need. i also know how to combine those two to come up with the healthiest way to get there. now, i just need to focus on that path and not let outside expectations pull me away from it.
which will be great fun, considering how much i love to people-please.
it's funny, people-pleasing. i think i am so focused on that end of the spectrum that i really don't function off of principle often. except around little kids. but with people who are my peers or my elders or even older kids i very much live like the end justifies the means, especially in matters of identity and emotion. if someone has reached a good, healthy conclusion, far be it for me to judge how they got there, you know? and if i know someone will reach a healthy conclusion, then i will stick with them through whatever it takes to get them there. fudge the rules, fudge the straight and narrow, bushes here we come and we'll get there eventually. perhaps the scratches will make it more real to us once we do reach it.
this is funny, because i have a fairly paradoxical view on the matter. what i mean is this: i value the means over the end, but that is because the means make the end so much sweeter . however, the end does ultimately justify the means. i actually got in an argument about the comparative weights of the end versus the means awhile ago. my position was that they are equally important, that one could not exist without the other. the end means nothing if there are no means by which to reach it, but the means are nothing if there is no end. but i do hold the means very dear to my heart, so i will always be a little biased toward them. i like to call them 'the process'.
*smirk*
anyway. i don't know what i'm going to do with my life. right now, however, i do know that i'm going to read my first novel of the summer before going to bed. i'm very excited about it - it's alexander mccall smith, who is the author of the no.1 ladies detective agency books, but it's a novel about edinburgh. originally it was published as a magazine series i think, and the name of it escapes me right now, but apparently it's very character-centered and delightful.
alright. i'm done.
there is much love,
goodnight.
