Make Me Do Difficult

I've mentioned before that I suffer from pretty severe anxiety. What I don't suffer from is Avoidance Syndrome. At all.

Okay, except for the phone thing, but between texting and the internet I think I've got it under control.

Just a couple of hours ago I finished up my List Meeting: all five of the professors on a committee get together and hash out 120 texts separated into three lists: Theory, Historical Period, and a Special Topic (usually related to a research question or prospective Dissertation). They kept asking to assign less, and kept cutting things I'd never read but wanted to for things I had already. They reminded me that it's not good to overload myself, but it's their job to be reasonable and assign what they think I can, with some help, accomplish.

I don't back down because something looks hard. I have stood on a red, plastic coke box in a foreign country and in a loud voice, in a language I barely knew, taught passing strangers about the Law of Chastity. And Word of Wisdom (that's the one where we don't drink coffee or beer). I have finished the dance, smiling, with blood in my shoes. That's literal. And not uncommon for ballerinas en pointe.* I have walked out my front door and faced the world after embarrassing myself beyond repair. I have confessed my attraction to the boy I liked. I have apologized publically for something stupid I said. I have apologized privately for something I didn't do. I have kept walking after I thought I couldn't take another step (it's not such a great distance as it used to be - *laughs at pudgy self*). I have chosen the strait path. I still believe in a faithless world. I believe when it would be easier to pretend not to, or to give up on faith altogether, for the sake of my career.

I do not flinch at the hard things. I am not afraid of marriage or children - the two most difficult things I know. I don't back down from cruelty, unforgiveness, or unpopularity. I don't hide from my own reflection. I ask questions.

So basically, my professors need to rein in my wild ambition. I praise them for their good work.

 

 

*It's simple physics. No matter how much padding you stuff into that damned canvas-and-glue shoe, you're still putting about 100lbs of weight (more, if you're tall) on a single, pointed bone at the end of your big toe. Plus friction.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Joy in the Ugly Process

Image
 Today I sat on a panel of colleagues at a "Meet the Professor" activity hosted by the English student committee. It was awesome! Such bright and interested English majors. Meanwhile, I was sitting there, a middle-aged woman, on a panel of people who had "arrived." They had reached their destination. Each of them took a moment and explained how they had succeeded, how they had found acceptance. Even those who had detoured through other paths before they got what they wanted described those detours as some kind of success: some successfully raised families, some had other jobs, etc. Some were convinced that it was because of a particular habit or capability. For several minutes, I just sat there feeling horrible, right in the middle of this impressive panel. I should have stayed silent. Blerg. I can't stay silent. I'm not that wise. So I added my two cents: I explained that I would tell them something the others would not: that sometimes you don't arrive,...
Read more

High and Low Horses

 I have not blogged in a LONG TIME and I'm so rusty.  Politics these days, amirite? My little brother pissed me off a few weeks ago in the throes of a political kerfuffle (not reasoned enough to be an argument by either definition). He accused me of posing - I don't remember exactly what he called it, but it was something like "virtue signaling." And very, very rapidly, I was trapped. I could not even attempt to do the right thing without knowing that I was doing exactly what he had just sneered at. I suppose I could go back and carefully analyze the rhetoric of the conversation and delicately unravel exactly what was happening. I am capable of that kind of analysis, but this is a blog, not a school paper, and I'm more interested in the abstractions at play. I'm always more interested in the abstractions. Let's imagine that you have a stick figure in a two-dimensional world. I'd draw it and upload it for you, but somebody stole my reMarkable. Stick fig...
Read more

The Guilt-Edged Life

Folk philosophers and self-help "experts" (seriously: what kind of person claims to be an expert in living somebody else's life!? I mean, BESIDES me) have hypothesized about the negative emotions that we struggle with when we become painfully aware of our own flawed natures. In my own experience, I can identify three, and this year, I'm going to deal with each of them differently than I have before. 1) Shame. Shame is that mortification and humiliation I feel when I see my flaws through somebody else's eyes: a symptom of valuing their opinion above its worth. I want to learn how to put negative feedback - verbal and nonverbal - into context, subordinate to what I know is true about me, the world, and God. And I want to distinguish between my actions and my identity. I can be mistaken, but I am NOT a mistake. I am Batman, but that doesn't mean I accept all the pop-philosophy of the Christopher Nolan films. 2) Guilt. Guilt is the puritanical conviction that I ha...
Read more