This blog post isn’t inspired. It won’t flow nicely or have deep, coherent thoughts. I am forcing myself to write tonight because I haven’t gauged where I am at in writing in a while and, for some reason, I think it is important to keep documentation of where I’m at regularly.
In general, life has been a lot better. I definitely am happier than I was this summer. I am now comfortable in my job and in my community. I have made many friends, and I stay really busy working, studying and socializing. Sometimes I am so happy that I find myself laughing out loud when I am driving along. Some days I feel more myself than I have felt in years. Those moments feel great.
I think part of the reason this happiness has settled in is because I have let go of trying so hard to be my version of perfect. This pressure I placed on myself was keeping me wound so tight and was inconsistent with who I was and am able to be today. No matter what I did in a day, week or month, I could not be who I was expecting myself to be because I’m not ready to move on. I need more time.
This break from attempted perfection is good and bad. It’s great because I can breathe. I don’t spend all my free time contemplating what I did right, what I did wrong, what I should be doing, who’s disappointed in me, why this happened, and how religion plays into the complexities of my life. Instead my free time is spent studying or light/shallow socializing. It is easy; it is fun; and I think it’s good for a season. The bad thing about my disinterest in being perfect is, it is kind of more like a disinterest in improving. I am more apathetic towards life now then I have ever been. I just don’t care about a lot of stuff that was at one time very important to me and I hope becomes very important to me again in the future.
It’s a weird place to be in. I don’t know when I’ll start caring again. I don’t know when I’ll be ready to seek out perfection and be the upstanding citizen, Mormon, daughter, wife, mother, teacher, etc. that I know is who I am. It’s weird when you know you are not living up to your potential and are okay with it. I just don’t want the pressure of failure again. I don’t want to trust or hurt. I am basically making the choice to be damned for a season. I hope forgiveness works and I hope hearts do change. I don’t want to be who I am today forever, but it is comfortable today. It is good today. I am so much less a person than I was during my marriage, but I am so much happier with who I am. I am accomplishing so much less, I am impacting so few people, I waste a lot time of time but I feel good.
This post was written on 10/11/2010. I just forgot to publish it!
3 comments:
I'm glad you're still writing. It's refreshing to see honesty in a blog especially through a time that most people would just not bother talking about nor desire to analyze.
My point is, I hope you keep going with the posts.
I just wonder... is it really your potential if you have to seek it out?
I think you try should be right here in this good and comfortable moment, and see where it takes you. You're a person with drive. I am confident that if you just let go of your idea of Perfect Shannon and see where that takes you, you'll end up finding a whole new version of Perfect Shannon.
And if you're not happy, you can go back to the first Perfect Shannon. Or create another Perfect Shannon.
Life is filled with these frustrating paradigms to which nobody has answers, just experiences.
(P.S. If you're thinking of grad school, beware. You can't turn the thoughts off.)
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