A New Year, a New Mind

This wasn’t the first post for 2016 that I was intending to put up; the other one is still in my drafts folder.

I just arrived home after a New Year’s spent visiting with family; on the way home, I finished Francis Chan’s book, Crazy Love.

Coming home, seeing our shriveled Christmas tree, realizing that I must go back to work and wait a whole year before Christmastime again… well, call me a kid but it made me really sad. I had such an amazing Christmas this year; if I were being honest, I’d say it was the best. And the thought of leaving that behind made me a little misty-eyed. I only get to see my whole family (siblings, niece, nephew, uncles, aunts,  cousins, grandma) together once a year (if I’m lucky), and I loved our time together. It is a huge delight to spend time with them and I feel so blessed and privileged to call them Family.

Me being sad about leaving my family time behind… actually makes me super happy. Because not everyone has family that they love to be around, or loves them. Not everybody has family, period. And that makes me very sad. Which is probably why I started bawling as  I thought of my own family.

It is so strange being so happy that something makes you so sad, but that was the state I found myself in.

It’s been a crazy past couple of days– okay, month– okay, semester– Alright. Year. [let’s be honest: I carry the crazy with me all throughout life.] But the last four months I can say have been some of the best and worst months of my life. They’ve been the best because the situations I’ve found myself in and my (lack of) health and various relationships have pushed me to pursue God and become closer to him more than ever before in my life, and the worst because a lot of those situations that brought said closeness with God have been downright hellish.

I’ve had to come to terms with some very unhealthy mental habits of mine, which have brought sickness and anxiety attacks and all sorts of issues to my life. I’ve had to be brutally honest with my family and my friends in ways I’ve never been before… brutally honest about how weak I really am and how much a struggle appearing normal is for me sometimes.

But tonight, I am happy. No, I am joyful. I am joyful like I have rarely experienced in large quantities before this past August. I am joyful because I can feel both my joy and sadness with an alacrity and sharpness that would have been dull and shriveled, even a year ago. There is a cloud that has been over my soul for years, one that has greyed even the most vibrant of colors in my life. This cloud has only begun to shift in the past year, and if the last few months are any indication, the stormy deluge it brings at its passing is fierce but it will only serve to wash away the grime that has encased my soul.

I am so, so grateful that God has finally gotten into my head the beauty of vulnerability. For so long I saw it as a sign of weakness; and it is.

It is in our weaknesses that Christ is strongest, and it is our weaknesses that he uses as an avenue for his glory. His ways are not our ways; his thoughts are not our thoughts.

I’ve experienced unfettered joy in the last two weeks like I haven’t… ever. I’ve been so happy, and enjoying time with my family and relaxation when considering all circumstances I shouldn’t be. I’m amazed at this gift of joy, and love, and family, that seems newly washed and beautiful and satisfying like never before. And my heart aches for those whose Christmas season has been the exact opposite of that.

Even though I am filled with trepidation for returning to work and the myriad uncertainties of the future, I also am so happy, and excited to see God work in ways I’ve never before seen in my life in 2016.

I pray he:

Clarifies my vision for how I can best serve him and bring glory to his name.

Keeps my mind in the present and my heart near his, so I can walk in his Grace daily and share it daily.

Shows me more of his beauty, both through his creation and his heart.

Gives me more of his courage, to do and say and be who he is and who he wants me to be.

Shows me how to love more fully, live more deeply, and walk more closely with him.

Shows me how to fail more gracefully, say no more often (and more tactfully), and how to manage my resources (both time, health, and money) more in alignment with his laws.

 

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I’m an Entitled Generation Y Dream-Baby

I’m not a baby boomer, I’m a babied dreamer, according to Tim Urban’s Generation Y(uppie) article. And I’m pretty sure he’s right.

The article explains why I feel entitled to a chance at breaking into the writing world. I quit my low-level job in the fast-food industry and for the next two months I’ll be cutting my teeth on the freelance writing business, an even lower paying job industry, where websites like Elance and Odesk will pay you .5 cents a word to write the next New York Times front-line article. And no, I don’t mean .05, as in five cents a word– I mean half a cent, as in .005 dollars a word.

As a recent college graduate (big surprise there), I knew that choosing to major in what I loved (non-fiction writing, Linguistics, and Arabic) was not the safest route– But it’s what I loved to do. And it’s what I felt would fulfill me the most. But, as Urban so indelicately points out, green grass isn’t enough for Generation Y GYPSYS (Gen Y Protagonists and Special Yuppies). A grass-eating, rainbow-spitting unicorn must fertilize our verdant lawns.
I deserve a job is the mentality—and not just any job, but one that fulfills me on a spiritual, emotional, and magical level.

The grass under my feet isn’t looking very green currently, however. So, I’m thinking of going back for more school, more “enlightenment,” and a Ph.D in a field (academics) that has a depressingly static employment field. In case you haven’t heard, they don’t’ offer job security or tenure to  much of anybody anymore.

But hey! I won’t be happy until I get that unicorn. And I’ve worked hard, so I deserve what I want, right?
Urban gives some good advice to yuppies like me: 1) Stay Wildly Ambitious, 2) Stop Thinking That You’re Special, and 3) Ignore Everyone Else.

But, as we all know, it’s quite easy to give advice, and not so much to take it. But I’m going to try. I’ve got the ambitious part covered, and I’m coming to the realization that I’m not a special little snowflake. But ignoring everyone else? That’s a bit more difficult, especially when you can’t help but perceive (the falsified reality) that everyone else is doing Just a Bit Better than you are.

Maybe Generation Y’s problems stem from the mentality that what we have is never enough. If there is one iota of our dreams that have gone unfulfilled, this spoils the joy that comes out of any success that we have been able to achieve. I think that my generation, despite all the talk of green grass and unicorns, are very pessimistic: which is the attitude you accrue when you expect life to go completely your way, all the time, and make no allowances for differentiation.

This doesn’t sound like a new problem for the most recent generation to deal with– this is a problem that goes deeper than contemporary ideologies. It’s a human nature problem, one that humanity has struggled with, I daresay, for generations.

So, while I don’t think my Yuppie generation will win the “Best Lawn” award, I doubt we’ll do much worse than our predecessors, either. I think we’re neither Stupendously Awesome nor Horrendously Awful.

Or who knows, maybe we are Special Little Snowflakes. But as we know, no two snowflakes are alike; so if Generation Y is special, Generation X was pretty special, too.

Generation Y is just more Specialer.
But I will leave a discussion of disintegrating grammar and morphology for another post.