The Futrue

"I've looked at life from both sides now. From up and down, and still somehow, it's life's illusions I recall, I really don't know life at all." -Joni Mitchell

This has always been my favorite song. I discovered it on my favorite movie, Love Actually, and loved it so much that I chose it for my high school senior dance recital and then four years later in a senior undergraduate project. My love for the lyrics and feeling of the song has remained unwavering. I guess this is largely because it is a idyllic coming of age song. It is also very soulful and pensive, and I instinctively am hopelessly idealistic, soulful, and pensive.. sigh.


This project is intended to highlight moments in life that involve the world and finding beauty; however, I am using today for my self absorbed post. Today is the last day of my first sabbatical from my first "grown up" job. When I started this job, my life was in a messy place and my workplace was also in a messy place. In the last 7 months the office has gotten better, and I got increasingly messier. The last two weeks have given me time to reflect and prepare to start fresh.

One of the reasons that my life got progressively messier? Undoubtably the painful yet beautiful experience that is growth. In growth, humanity often feels more pain that pleasure; however the benefits are usually beautiful and worth all the pain. It usually takes much time to discover this beauty. I've done a lot of painful growing this year. In the midst of this growth I lost much of my previously grand organizational and planning skills. I've realized increasingly more "It's life's illusions i've recalled, I really don't know life at all." In coming to this realization I was paralyzed and have been very incompetent in most areas of my life. My previous convictions could no longer aide my nature to think about the future or even the task at hand. I didn't know where my life was heading for the first time in my life and I was handicapped by fear.

I've never been one to be such a planner that I lay out my entire week in my head on Sunday, or started planning for college during my freshman year of high school. Thankfully, my neuroses never reached this height ;). I did, however, always have a large picture of non-negotiable and most decisions were made based around these non-negotiable future plans. First example, I wanted out of my small town and had little resources. Second example, I knew I wanted to "help people" and so I chose social work. I stayed with social work because of how much I loved it's core ethics. I could go on about these convictions and plans, but I'll spare any readers ;). The point being, I always looked at one predominating factor, and didn't usually change my path in the midst of adversity. I tend to endure through adversity to the verge of insanity (this is a bad habit, I don't recommend it.) In the last few years, I've began to discover the flaw in all this planning and began to live in the moment more. Then in the last year, I began to live in the moment too much. Today, I realize I need a balance, a healthy balance. I've always been a firm advocator for balance in all areas of life, but it is easier said than done. It seems during the last 7 months of temporary life paralysis, I've oscillated and fretted to no avail. I wanted to quit my job, I wanted to move from athens, I wanted to stay in athens and get a thoughtless job, and all I secretly wanted to do was run away from it all.

After this week of clarity and rest, I've examined all the forces influencing these decisions and I've decided that what I need to focus on is how I can best make the world happy and how I can best be happy in the world. These two factors do not have to be exclusive. This answer seems a bit simple in that it is only one sentence, but happiness has forever been a factor that has perplexed and complexed many men. As I'm discovering life, I'm discovering what happiness is. This process never ends, but I'm making progress in separating the rubbish from the gold. Sometimes insecurities, poorly constructed social constructs, stress, and poor personal decisions can cloud our ability to discern happiness from it's evil cousins of greed and self-absorption. All of these factors often cause us to loose hope in the idea of a happy life.

After all this self reflection, I'm still left about as confused about life as you are about this post after reading my poorly constructed tangent. My point abstractly is simply- I'm going to try living in the moment more, but not impulsively, while also having hope for the future, which may include a bit of planning.

More tangibly and lengthy, I've started planning again, but I'm doing it differently. I'm focusing on happiness and my strengths. After planning through new eyes, I've become pretty set on a future in special education. I've always believed the confines of social work extend beyond our field and so I will always be a social worker to my very core. I do plan on staying in my job for the next few years, as I explore how to take my next steps. This isn't just to buy me time (or to literally "buy" things; however, nice it is nice not being a starving student ;)), or even because of my love of living in adversity. I'm choosing to stay because reflection has shown me it is where I need to be to make the families I'm working with and grown to love stronger and also to make myself stronger. As I've complained to many lately, this job highlights many of my less favorable qualities. Qualities that have often held me back. In the past 7 months I've allowed this to defeat me some, but now I'm turning a new leaf and am going to use this job to strengthen these weaker points. 


I've started my search for grad schools and begun the first steps of the process. I'm doing it slowly so that I can do it right. I want to go somewhere completely new without allowing any fears of change or failure to hold me back. I've started researching and the University of Oregon has one of the top special education programs. I'm just starting the process, but I feel drawn towards a place with lots room for outdoor adventure and completely different from where I've always been. My next step is the GRE and looking for assistantships. Aside from exploring these plans for the future, with the help of this project, I'll be focusing on beauty of the moment. Change is difficult, and that is one of the reasons I've started this project, to help keep me accountable :).

Be prepared for much shorter and less narcissistic posts in the future.