Welcome to my life

I'm at one of those "in between" stages of my life.
I just graduated from college in December with a degree in special education. Some people think I wasted my degree because mostly what I got in my three and a half years of higher learning is a passion to go to law school. (I don't choose to hang out with those people). So here I am, with 8 months to kill before the next important chapter in my life begins. How do I choose to spend them? Working of course. Not only because I am responsible to the point of being boring, but also because law school ain't cheap and I'm not ALLOWED to work at all during my first year. I'm not a huge fan of debt, so I'm trying to take advantage of these months and work as much as possible. Like 60+ hours. In two boring, physically demanding jobs.

So I've been doing this for a few weeks, and I currently and finding myself to be cranky, a bit lonely, and exhausted. The thing is, I've been waiting my whole life to take a break from school. I'm SUCH a perfectionist and I get so stressed out that school is really consuming for me. I don't take the time to try fun things that seem interesting to me (like yoga, karate, book clubs, the list could go on). I don't take much time to read for fun and as a result feel like I'm not really a well rounded chicka. But the worst part, by far, is that I don't take the time to be one of those "good" Christians. I know that the response to that is "There are no "good" Christians. In fact the "bad" Christians are the only ones who can be saved." Or something like that. But I'm not disciplined. I can try anything for o, a day. But I don't read my Bible, pray, fast, meditate, any of that stuff, REGULARLY. And I was so excited for a time where I wouldn't be stressed out and could just concentrate on working, working out, and getting my life right.

And THEN work started. At 6am. In the morning. Which means that I wake up at 5am. Just to breeze in there right on time. And then when that's over, I go to work AGAIN. And the thing is, these jobs are physically demanding, but they are mindless. I have time to think literally all day. And I don't know why, but most of the time I find myself thinking about/focusing on my fears. I'm afraid of MANY things. There's this boy who kindof made my life miserable this summer. I'm afraid of seeing him again. I'm afraid that I won't have enough money to move to the South (my great love!) and go to law school. I'm afraid that people only like me because of what I can do for them. I'm afraid my car is going to die soon. Heck, I'm afraid of scary movies. The list could go on and on and....on. and it DOES. For hours. And by the time I get home, I'm already so defeated. There's no way I could do anything productive. I go to the gym for stress relief. I complain to my mom. I eat. I waste time online and watching tv. Basically I'm in a perpetual fetal position, too timid to tackle life. And in the last week, I've become really conscious of what I'm doing and wondering how I can possibly change.

It was a depressing few days. I wasn't sure who to talk to about this problem. I feel like most of my Christian friends would say, "Katie, you're too busy. You should obviously quit one of your jobs and then you'd have time for more important things. Isn't God more important than money to you?" And that's frusterating to me because He is, and this is clearly a time of imbalance in my life, but I can't get to school unless I work my butt off right now. I'm not exactly working to support a mall habit here. So I was thinking over the advice that I was SURE my friends would have given me had I chosen to ask them. (I didn't).

Despite the weather/my depressed mood about life, I showed up for Church on Sunday morning. I just recently started going to a pretty charismatic place. I mean, they wave their hands and dance around and do a bunch of other stuff that this baptist girl would probably only feel comfortable doing after a few rum and cokes. I appreciate that these people get emotionally involved in their relationships with God. There seems to be an enthusiasm that I feel like I've been missing, but I'm also cautious about it because I don't like to do things based solely on my emotions. They've deceived me too many times. Anyways, in between the songs, we were talking about how God can move the mountains and whoever was up there on the stage asked us what mountains we wanted God to move in our lives. And my answer was, "God, I want more time in my day!! I can't do it all!!" And, I swear to you, God answered me right then and there.

You know that show "The Big Bang Theory?" (funny show btw. I highly recommend it.) There's this episode where Sheldon is trying to figure out a science problem. He decides to follow Albert Einsten's example. Einstein discovered the Theory of Relativity while working in a patent office. It was mundane work, and I don't remember the details, but it freed up his frontal cortex to do complex thinking. (This idea works for Sheldon in the episode too). Um, HELLO!!! Who is doing more mundane work than me?? And what is more complex than the Bible? If there was a way that I could read the Word of God before my long pointless day, I could meditate on it ALL day. I know this is really obvious, especially thinking about it now, but I really didn't consider the possibility of waking up early(er) to read my Bible before work. It doesn't seem possible that I could wake up before 5am. But I can. So, I'm working on thinking about things that are true while I'm working. They don't necessarily have to be Godly. They just have to be true. It can be what I read that morning. Or anything else. I have typed WAY more than my fair share for today, so I will expound upon this another time. But this is my blog for my "in between" phase.