Saturday, October 15, 2011

What was God thinking?

I ask myself this question on an almost daily basis. "What was God thinking when He sent me here?" As I think about my personality, the situations that I thrive in and the way that I envision my future path coming to pass, the intense stress that is the first semester of grad school doesn't quite fit. I don't thrive on competition or knowing I did something first. Being under intense deadline pressure doesn't produce my best work. I'm not satisfied with producing something and looking over it later with a shrug, thinking, "Well, it's not my best work, but I did the best I could with what I had." I can't manage stress through alcohol, cigarettes, food or sex. Even if I could, I don't have time for any of them. I'm not okay if I pull all-nighters or grab three hours of sleep just so I can meet a deadline. I can't skim a scholarly publication and fake my way through a literature review. I can't juggle. I'm even worse at multi-tasking. I don't know where I want to intern next summer, what classes I should take next semester, who my faculty advisor for my thesis/project should be or what I want to do when I graduate. I just got here, but supposedly I should have all of this figured out. I think part of the peace from my last entry had to do with the fact that I finally shut down from stress overload. I was in denial about what's due over the next month and the decisions I have to make in the next two weeks. I'm still not thinking about it. I'm on autopilot, living off of my lists. I still don't know the answer to my question at this point. I'm hoping that He lets me in on it sometime soon. At this juncture, I'm not even in a place where I think I'd hear Him if He did say anything about it. The ever-growing list of things I have to do that constantly rolls through my mind drowns everything else out these days.

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