Coming To Terms With My C+ Life

I took a long drive this afternoon... and did a lot of thinking and re-evaluating of my entire present-day situation. Depressed, angry, completely ready to quit everything and just hide in a cave, I knew I needed to get away and make some decisions. Since today is the first day of March, and the first day of meteorological spring, it seemed like an appropriate time to consider my own rebirth into an identity forged my my hand. Coming to terms with being a solo entity and the realization that I had always wrapped my entire identity around Erhard gave me pause. With him gone, I simply can't do that anymore. It occurred to me that in some areas of my life I have been unbelievably successful, and in others an epic failure. Averaging them out I came to the uncomfortable conclusion that I have led a C+ life, not quite average, but less than I want for myself.

It would be so easy to list the many things I am dealing with right now and try to console myself with the notion that I am unique in the challenges I face, but as the road hummed beneath my tires I had to admit that none of the components of my life are so unique that someone, somewhere is not also dealing with the exact same paradigm. While the constellation of my life is probably unique to me, each individual piece is not. I thought of the metaphor of all matter, how everything in the universe is constituted from the same essential ingredients, yet the combinations are myriad and unique to each structure. So it is with my life and being. The simple answer then is to break my life and being down to its most essential parts and reconstitute them in such a way as to give meaning and pride to my existence.

Of course this means work, and lots of it. There is school to consider, my health and fitness, our financial situation, the realities faced by those I hold close to me that weigh upon my heart... But if I just slow down, deconstruct, and organize my schedule and priorities, in thirty-one days my life can become appreciably lighter, freer, and more joyful. To begin with I need to break down the requirements I must fulfill for school – both last semester and this present term. There is nothing that is really stopping me at this very moment from completing everything I have to do to complete last semester's work and remain completely current with my present studies over these next thirty-one days. It will take motivation and time management and more discipline than I have held myself to for a very long time, but the pity-party is over. One month of concentrated work is not beyond anyone's capability, and certainly not mine when I am functioning at my best.

Sometimes trying to figure out where to begin is the most overwhelming part, trying to find a way to organize my thoughts and behaviors in such a way as to produce real results. I am lousy at this – I think I have always been bad at this stage of the plan. But I have made a list of last semester's written assignments and that's a start. What I failed to list however was the volume of reading necessary to complete each of those assignment and that has been in part what has kept me stuck. But if I want to be realistic, each written assignment must be matched by its corresponding readings or else they don't tell the complete picture. I missed so much of the semester that without the required reading, the assignments are almost incomprehensible. Additionally my lack of motivation has already but me behind in this semester's work, and I cannot afford to screw this semester up. So this digital journal is my beginning template. Google Calender is going to become my best friend for awhile. My physical journal will also be at my disposal, parked on my nightstand, although most of my planning will obviously occur here, since editing these entries is a hundred thousand times easier. It's time to begin.