State of the Union

Well...maybe not of the union...but of me. :)

This is just an effort to stop for a minute and look at myself honestly, to see where I'm headed and where I've been, and where I want to go.  Some personal reflection, feel free to skip it.

Work
I keep going through these cycles with work.  Either there are a million things going on and I'm overworked and stressed but with a feeling of accomplishment, or I'm in a lull where I don't feel like doing anything and so my confidence drops.  As far as my productivity and confidence at work...the hard times are when I flourish.

But then I think...maybe I flourish during the hard times because I don't have time to think about anything.  I'm so immersed in the job that I can forget the fact that I'm not passionate about it.  Maybe I'm just fooling myself.

Either way, this back and forth is not good for me.  Neither swing is healthy.  When I work too much I stop working out, I stop craving healthy foods, and I get generally unbalanced: emotionally and spiritually.  When I'm in my lull I may be happier in my non-work life, but spending 8 hours avoiding work has a real affect on my self-image.  I start feeling like I'm not living up to my potential (the potential I show during busy times), and that I suck for it.

Personal Life
One thing I notice about myself is that I am much more insecure than I used to be.  That may be just because I used to be in a relationship that was so secure and complacent...that I never thought I had to worry about.  And now "reality" has set in and the uncertainty has been exposed, and I have to learn how to deal with it.  It's good, because I don't have the same security blanket I used to have, but that doesn't make it easy.

It's easy to get worried now.  The things in my previous relationship that went wrong were subtle, and built up over time without me even noticing it.  So now there's much more to worry about.  But then I remember that it was my attempts to control that helped the problems spring up, and that by worrying and trying to control things now, I'll only spoil it for the future.

I used to pride myself on how un-girly I was when it came to emotional things.  How I was always able to keep my cool and look at things calmly and without fear.  But how much of that was me being naive and sheltered?  Because now I find that sometimes those things I used to look down on just seem to bubble up inside me.  Stupid irrational feelings that I know intellectually don't make sense but I feel them anyway.  Before I would just dismiss them...but now it's harder.  And I seek something to fill that hole, to make me feel okay again.  I haven't learned yet exactly how to stop running, as I so often encourage others to do.

But I continue to think, to discern, to try to understand my own thoughts.  That is something I won't ever stop doing.  The clarity that comes from that, from doing this, is incredibly beneficial to my mental and spiritual health.

As far as my actual relationship goes, I absolutely love spending time with Ben!  We are affectionate and loving and warm and dorky together, and I love it.  He's always making me laugh and smile or look at him like he's a freaking weirdo (because he is). 

Although I have to say, and this is something I've always been wary of when things are going well, it does kind of make me worry that we're not paying attention to something.  Happiness can sometimes veil the inner workings, make us content to not look too closely.   And again I get worried, or perhaps paranoid, sometimes that our eyes are closed to something important.  Or that, in order to keep the happiness where it is, we will stop ourselves from even bringing up anything that might jeopardize it.

This is definitely not to say that there's anything specific that is wrong.  I just get paranoid.

Spiritual Life
I had been feeling like this area was underdeveloped for a while, but this is starting to really turn around.  Going to church more really helps me, plus I've had some time to read and to think and to post.  Believe it or not, posting here is an important component of my spirituality, mainly because it allows me to do a great deal of discernment and a form of meditation.  It's the process of it that helps.

I've also had some time alone lately, which is good.  Not that I want to be away from Ben or my friends or family, but it does help to have some alone time that is not work.

Overall I have felt significantly better in this area as of late.

All of these things are interconnected though...so as one area of my life gets better, so do the rest.  Unfortunately it also means that as one area takes a hit (work), the rest of it takes a hit.  Man, life is so complicated sometimes.