Wisdom

Hey Steph,
  So I feel a bit like a broken record of late, but once again I've been super busy. I'm waiting for it to calm down, but maybe that is the wrong way to look at it. Maybe this is just life, and it will never slow down.
         Four years ago, I was ending a yearlong internship before heading back to school for my master's degree. I felt busy then too. I kept thinking to myself, "If I can just finish off all these loose ends at work, then I'll be back to working part-time and going to school." I probably had a bit of nostalgic grass-is-always-greener syndrome going on because I remembered my days as an undergrad being fairly low key and not too busy--not true. As I was leaving my office after eight hours of work to head into the second half of my three-hour-a-day commute home, I ran into one of the elderly volunteers that hum in mass around my building. Like all the old (or shall I say mature?) people that I worked with, she had a smile on her face made of pure skylark song. She kindly asked how I was doing. I half-heartedly said, "Great. Just waiting for life to slow down." She looked at me with warm honey eyes and said frankly, "It never does." And she was off, leaving me perturbed in my stressful state. In frustration, I thought with the ignorance of a newly minted college grad that she was completely wrong. She had no idea that within a week, I'd be back to school life where I wasn't working 40-hour weeks and commuting 15 hours a week.

wisdom: rare and precious knowledge hard-earned wrought through experience and sometimes repeated experience


        Years later, I've learned she was right. But knowing that and coping with that are two different things, and I've haven't accomplished the latter. (Can I just time-out here and say that I wish we used the grammatical construction of "the latter" and "the former" more often? So clever and precise!) As it turns out, two days before I ended that internship, I was asked to stay on as a contractor working ten hours a week along with school and another job. So life didn't slow down, but it did get more complex as I tried and sometimes failed and sometimes succeeded at shoving in two jobs, church responsibilities, school, socializing--yes, socializing isn't always seen as a necessity but for the sake of my sanity and my singlehood it was--and writing a thesis into each of my days. I'm exhausted just writing this list.
         And I'm not special. Everyday, many people--let me rephrase that--all people are juggling family, job(s), community, hobbies, housework, worship, personal time, etc. And with all that going on, I wonder how many of us feel like we are drowning sometimes, drowning in an overwhelming deluge of responsibility, guilt, and failure even as we are actually doing quite well at accomplishing a lot? It's easy for me to see people feeling overwhelmed around me and wonder how they could ever feel like they aren't doing enough when their acing job opportunities, cradling a child in their arms, or merely having a smile on their face. That's success!
    But it's sure hard to feel like it is. The thing is I'm at another crossroads where for the second time I'm in my last week of work with the aforementioned job. Another exciting opportunity has presented itself in my life, so it's time to move on, and as I tie off loose ends and feel overwhelmed by everything that needs to get done just 24-hours from now, I think about that the words of that kind, wise, elderly woman four years ago. I'm still shaking my head in frustration, thinking, "She can't be right. It's going to slow down." But I know I'm wrong.

Love you, Steph.

Cheers,

Amanda

Who do you know that could use some words of reassurance that they are succeeding? Let them know. We all could use a warm honey smile sometimes.