Planning: Day 4

Song of the Day: Roll Away Your Stone by Mumford & Sons

I love believing in something bigger than myself. I love believing in goodness and truth and life and humanity and purpose and curiosity and wonder and hope and all of those things that make your voice ring when you talk about them seriously and with enthusiasm. It’s why I love superheroes that fight for justice and probably why I’m a sucker for The West Wing and more than likely why Pope Francis can make me cry tears of joy just by being a good person.

Sometimes I think that’s enough to carry me, that belief in something bigger and better than me. Sometimes I think that if I had a goal, if I had a passion, I could run with confidence this race set before me and never cast my eyes from side to side. My passion could define me and everything would fall into place and sure, it would be difficult from time to time, but the difficulty wouldn’t stop me. I can carry on. I can push forward. It’s what the heroes do and I believe in heroes, whether I should or not.

But not always. If I have an angel pulling me upward on the strength of nouns typed with initial capitals, I have a demon pulling me down with whispers the rest of the time. Not to be dramatic about it, but it’s a convincing counterargument, the one my brain sells me. I don’t have a "purpose." I don’t have a goal and a passion. Those are words for false ideas, stories that we tell kids so they’ll get out of the house and do stuff for us without complaining. You buy into all the purpose crap and you’re a sucker. I can carry on with all those fake dreams, sure, but why bother? It’s not like there’s someone I’m living for. 

I want that, most of all. Someone to support me and carry me upward and help me find my purpose and my strengths and remind me what I’m good for, remind me why I try. I feel like I should find all of that inside of me, or from the big letter things in the first paragraph. Hope in human goodness. It should give me a fire. It should give me a purpose. Those things are gifts from the divine that impassion souls and make them dare the stars and I want that and I should be able to find that without someone else giving me a boost up. 

That’s why I’m so frustrated right now with all of this. With everything. What will it take to get me to go to extraordinary lengths? What will it take to make me into the kind of person my heart wants to be? Will it take someone else, curing me of my dependable bend toward independence? Will it take an event, something that picks a path for me? Or can I just think my way through this, just pick the most logical choice and seek out passion within it? The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, they say. One exhausting step, followed by a near infinity of others and why in the world did they think that saying would be comforting? 

Is passion something like love? Do you know it when you see it, even if you can’t describe it? Do… do some people go their whole lives without it? Is it okay if I don’t have it? Is it okay if I just do my thing until it wanders into my life? Or should I seek it out? Is there a stone for me to roll away in this scenario? 

They throw quote like, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” at you. 

But they never tell you what to do to fix that. 

Planning- Day 3

Song of the day: The Once and Future Carpenter by The Avett Brothers

Yesterday, I walked out of a fro-yo shop and a star caught my eye. I basically ran out into the parking lot because I needed to see the rest of the sky to know which star it was. I was in Hickory. My sense of cardinal directions would have been useless anyway. As I placed the brightest stars in their constellations, I pointed them out to my friends who had presumably followed me out the door and immediately became puzzled as to why I ran out into the parking lot. Then I pointed out the planets that we could see and I found the Big Dipper. We had a grand old time in the middle of a parking lot on a Tuesday night with a heavily light-polluted sky.

I’m good at my job.

I say this with all the humility in the world. I can always be better and some days are better than others, but I have a knack for teaching about space and stars and planets and stuff. I enjoy it and I’m good at it. I have emails to prove it. And I’m good at the logistics of my job as well. One of my favorite times of year is September when the world is coming alive again and I sit down with a calendar, a spreadsheet, and at least fifty visit requests, planning out my travel year, sending emails and getting confirmations and settling things. I work around school schedules and work schedules and I make things happen and I love it. And my summers, with all their logistics and planning, are 100% worth it. I had a kid yell out today, “I love science!” If that’s not a sign that I’m doing my job right, I don’t know what is.

And I kinda stumbled into it. I mean, I should have known- I’ve worked with kids since I was old enough to not be considered one anymore and I’m the appropriate kind of bossy for teaching, but I always wanted to be something else. I don’t have a passion for teaching and so I didn’t pursue it. I applied for a job at the planetarium summer camp because I needed a summer away from Granite Falls and everything just kinda snowballed from there. I’m happy it all worked out so well, but I didn’t plan for any of this to happen.

There’s this moment in the first episode of The Office where Jim is doing his interview and he says, "If I left, what would I do with all this useless information in my head? You know? Tonnage price of manila folders?” And it’s funny and it’s a throwaway line and it’s overshadowed by the fact that he then presents us with his knowledge of Pam’s favorite yogurt, but it always stuck in my head. If I left, what would I do with the knowledge that Betelgeuse is the brightest star in Orion with a name that means “shoulder of the giant” and will explode someday in the next million years? Probably use that to lead into jokes about other parts of Orion’s anatomy because I think I will be a perpetual middle schooler in terms of humor, but the point remains: I have all this knowledge. Am I just supposed to let it rot?

Because I love what I do and I’m good at it and that’s so satisfying but… but. But I feel a push toward something else, more than just a flippant wanderlust. I’m not a poet. I’m not an artist. I don’t feel the need to stop doing what I’m doing so I can focus on bringing new and beautiful things into the world. But I do want something more. Something different. I have a disquieted soul, and it’s hard to stay still with that condition. 

I need to step away. I need to be somewhere new. And it doesn’t mean that I can’t incorporate the things I already know and love into something new and it doesn’t mean that I have to leave forever and forget where I’ve been. But it does mean moving on. And that’s not simple. 

Planning- Day 2

Today’s song: The First Single (You Know Me) by The Format

It’s really unfortunate that we spend our entire lives inside our own body. 

No, think about it. Take thirty seconds and think about all the things that are specific to you, all the challenges that you face because of who you are, trapped in your own body. Think of your limitations. Think of your opportunities. Think of how the world thinks of you. 

Now, think about how your life would change if you weren’t in your own body. The world would see you differently if you had a different color hair, different color skin, different gender, different abilities, different brain, different chemistry. Maybe that’d make things easier for you. Maybe it’d make things harder. But it’d definitely be different and those differences in our realities are what make living with other people so hard. It’s difficult to find your place in society when you can’t really understand where all the people in society are coming from. Not completely, anyway.

I know the limitations of my body and my brain. I might flagrantly disregard those limitations from time to time, but I know them. I know the prayers I have prayed over and over again for direction. I know by rote the arguments for and against every career path I’ve considered so far. I know the hurts I harbor, the wants I ignore and the ones succumb to, the worries, the fears, the hopes, the dreams. I know that I have this deep-seated sense of purpose, even though I don’t actually know what that purpose is or what purpose means.

What I want is to spend a day in someone else’s mind, just watching. I want to see how someone else thinks, to understand what’s going on in there behind the filters they put up for other people. I know what’s inside my head and I know how hefty my filter is. Are other people like me? Am I normal? (Is there a normal? Probably not. But there have to be things we share, right?) I want to see the big picture of the universe and then see how I fit into it. I want to know if there is a big picture of the universe, or if I, like everyone else, just have to find my own place in it. I want to see how that problem looks from a different set of eyes, and then another, and another, until I have enough different points of view to make sense of the elephant. 

This is why I love books. They drop you into someone else’s mind. And this is why I love television shows- after you’ve settled into the characters, you get to see what the writers think, how they view these fictional people you’ve come to love, how they set up situations to prove a point to you and to the characters. Same with movies. This is, coincidentally, why we need diverse books and TV shows and movies- we can’t walk around in someone else’s skin for a day and so we need to be told the stories that expand our horizons, that challenge our ideas, that make us see the world through different sets of eyes.

I think that in order to figure out what I should do with the rest of my life, or where I should aim myself anyway, I need to get over myself. I need to see myself like the world sees me. As I learned from this epic article on Cracked, the world doesn’t really care that I’m a nice person. It cares what I can do for it. And I think I can do a lot of things for it and I just need to start doing. 

At the same time, it’s not like I’m sitting unemployed on the couch. I can choose where I go next. I want to maximize what I can do for the world. To do that, I need to see the world and to see where my skills fit in. 

So what about you? Are there books, TV shows, movies, articles, blogs, pictures, paintings, anything that helps you see the world more complexly? Anything you’d recommend? I know that it’s a life-long process, this learning about others, but I might as well get a big dose of that now.

Planning: Day 1

Three years ago, I took aim at the can that was my future and gave it a good, swift kick down the road. I could see it as I moseyed down the path. It was always there waiting for me, and in about six weeks, I’m going to reach it again. This leaves me with options.

I could, in theory, stay where I am. I have the best of jobs, where I get to work with kids and travel and have a grand old time while still educating and giving back to the state that’s given me a good plenty of opportunities. I could stick it out here for another year, or two, and save up some money (barring any other unforeseen tooth removal situations) and survey the state of the can when I reach it again, farther on down the road. 

But staying isn’t really an option. I mean, it is. It’s viable. But I can’t stay here indefinitely. Chapel Hill is wonderful and I’ll always be thankful for the experiences it’s given me, but there’s a whole world out there. There’s an entire planet of places outside of my state and I want to see what it’s like to be there. Besides, staying here for more than another year is going to feel like putting down roots and I’m not ready for roots yet. Soon, but not yet. I’ve got wanderlust in me still.

So that begs the question, “What next?”, in response to which I laugh loudly and reach for a glass of something strong because I have no idea how to answer that question. In seventh grade, I wanted to be an astronaut. In eighth grade, I wanted to be a journalist. When I walked into college, I wanted to be an astrophysicist. When I walked out of college, I wanted to be employed. Along the way, I decided definitely that I was for sure going to seminary and I was going to be a pastor and that was what my life would be. Farther on down the way, I decided to not decide on that just yet. Open-ended life, right? Kick the can down the road. Cross that bridge when you come to it. 

And I’m capable. I might not meet all the requirements for any job ever, but I can learn and I’m wiling to work. I have the awesome privilege and responsibility of being able to make something out of myself. I’m not  yet hindered by circumstance or ability. I can do many things. I just have to decide what to be and go be it. Take a breath, take a step, take a chance. Take my time. 

If it sounds like I’m talking myself into something, that’s because I am. The idea of “What next?” is a gigantic ocean that you have to dive into and swim around in. It’s got currents that push you and doldrums where it leaves you and a depth that is unfathomable. In my soul, I’m beyond excited to jump in. In my mind, I’m a little less sure. So this is the dance we do, where we wade into the water, swim out to the sandbar, and mumble confident quotes before closing our eyes, breathing in deeply, and taking the plunge.

Six weeks is a good amount to time to ponder and plan. I process life in writing, so that’s what I’ll do with this, and I’ll take you with me if you want. I’m thinking we’ll see a week of thinking about purpose and what that even means, a week of LSAT consequences, a week of hanging out with Jesus, a week in the life of an educator, a week of unrestricted dreaming, and last of all, a week of deciding. That will drop me off at the second week in September, right by my can, when the applications are all online and the bustle of the school year is ripe for beginning new things. This is a plan I can handle.

One of the things life has given me in the past few years is a substantial iTunes library of music that I love, so each day gets its own song, with its own thoughts and feelings about life and things. Today’s is Take Up Your Spade by Sara Watkins. 

I’ve never really built anything big or tried to grow anything that didn’t start out its life inside a pot, so I don’t know what you do after you take up your spade and break ground. But I guess that’s what tomorrow is for.