What am I doing?

I'm having mild freak-out. . . This is that moment in my life where I've got a million responsibilities and just as many choices to make and they've all got eight times that many possible outcomes.

I know I can do this. I know I can be a full-time student and keep a full-time job. I just feel like every moment not working or studying is wasted. The semester is in full-swing and it's never good to miss an entire week during the first month because it means the weeks following it are that much more complicated. I am several writing assignments behind, but I'm writing about things I feel passionate about. I don't want to wake up at the end of another semester wondering why I didn't take that class for personal gain instead of the grade or the degree. I will be able to say I put myself through college with very little help when this is over, but I also want to say with all honesty and sincerity that I found myself while doing it.

What will I gain out of Women's Studies beside a better knowledge of what the women who came before me accomplished, and an English elective??? Hopefully a better understanding about my relationship with my body, with food, with my education, with my ideas about what kind of family I want to create and raise, what kind of career I want, and what kind of woman I am. My film class will make me a better writer. My Intermediate Writing class will make me a better writer, but what will I learn about myself in the process? I don't know yet. The reason the prospect is so disorienting and uncomfortable is because inevitably . . . a lot of it will be the damage in me.

I'm kind of intimidated by my choices. I know that I am an incredible woman . . . incredibly talented, compassionate, intuitive, intelligent, capable, powerful, blabhalbhalbhalkbha;lkjdf these things are all important to me, but WHY have I not opened up and done what I believe I am capable of? Why do I half-ass as much as I do? Why is half-assed good enough to continually earn A's and B's? To continually be told by my colleagues that I've done a good job at work? That they can't do it without me? And that they would ask me not to leave them? Why do I feel like, even though I am successfull most of the time, that what I'm doing isn't good enough? That I haven't given it my all, that this isn't the best I can do?

Could it be that I just haven't invested love into my life? I don't mean loving myself (which I am always working on) . . . I mean putting love into my job, and my education. Is this what is missing?

I want all the answers, and I want them right now, and I want more time in the day to discover them!!!! I wish I did not require sleep.

I wonder what it would be like to live an uncomplicated life . . . what it would be like to have my life governed by one set of rules or beliefs that provided all the answers about who I am and what I'm doing here, what I am capable of . . . what is right or wrong or true and beautiful. A set of unchanging, un-evolving rules. Simple, trusting, faith in something. . . these things are something I have never had in all my life. The thing I have trusting faith in is myself, and change. Change that comes as soon as I am comfortable with something. I just wish it were easier to adapt to.

50 years from now, I want to look back and remember the woman I am now and wonder who I've become and who I will be... I wonder what it would be like if I wasn't on a life-long journey of self actualization, but I would not trade my enlightenment for the pleasure of simplicity in every waking moment of my life. I don't know if I will ever really know myself and tonight that is one of the most terrifying thoughts I've ever had. Almost as terrifying as thinking . . . . I don't want to.

This turmoil, these tumultuous moments, the distress and uncertainty, the complete anguish, the uncomfortable, and unhappy times of my life make it so rich and warm and valuable that I could never and I will never stop looking for more of myself.