“Sorry I’m busy during lunch on Friday. Ah yes, I see here, Friday from noon to 1pm, find a place and cry.”
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Struggle
I am 50-50 introvert-extrovert. If I have too much “people time”, I feel like I am going to die. If I have too much “alone time”, I feel like I am going to die. And lately, I have had tooooooooooooo much lonely time. I live alone in my apartment, and I don’t have a ton of friends up in The Great North™.
With COVID-19 has come a new found sense of slowness. Places are closed. Routines have been disrupted. There is less to “do” for many of us. It has really helped me reassess my busyness, and how I utilize my time. Is being “busy” really good?
As a Christian, I wish there was an easy answer to the great mystery of suffering. I wish and hope for a day where it would stop. But I’m not here to spread vapid platitudes, pretend I know all the answers, or dismiss hurt I’m seeing.
Winter is my version of hell—just add the absence of God, and cookies that you always think are chocolate chip, you take a bite, and they’re oatmeal raisin. That’s it. That’s hell.
When was the last time you heard someone say “yeah someone made me feel really bad about my beliefs until finally I agreed with them”?
I wanted to write this as an ode to any fellow Enneagram 3’s who may be wrestling with thinking they are not good enough. An ode to those who are feeling restless. An ode to those who are feeling like they should be “doing more”. An ode to those who feel like “more should be happening” in their efforts.
I hate silence. I often run from it. I will put music on. Turn on Netflix. Play video games. Listen to podcasts. Anything to take away the eerie whisper of nothing. But over the course of the past 5 months, I haven’t been able to run from silence much.
“Just remember, if you have a fat 13-year-old who has a bad haircut telling you that you’re worthless, remind him that he’s stupid, and that Fall Out Boy isn’t the epitome of music (no disrespect).”
Ever wonder what my creative process looks like? Wonder no more.
There’s a place in Scripture that’s been haunting me lately.
I’m really good at is pushing my emotions down deep deep inside of myself and saying that everything’s fine, and I’m “great!” when internally I feel like (in the words of Michael Gary Scott), “it feels like somebody took my heart and dropped it into a bucket of boiling tears..."
Do I love God, or my own theological version of God?
The older I get, the more I realize that this struggle will never go away, but it will be a continual battle of seeing myself as good enough, not succumbing to fear that I am is a failure, and doing things that give me life.
During this season of silence, discomfort, and seasonal depression, Advent could not come at a better time for me.
My entire life I’ve been fighting this battle of “Do It Self”.
I’m here to say one thing to fear: STUFF IT LIKE A CALZONE.
The more that I was creative, the less self-loathing and less self-doubt came with the creativity.
At the beginning of this year, I signed up to run a marathon on my birthday (04/16).
Right now I work at a high school cleaning poopy toilets (or being in “maintenance” if you want to make it sound fancy), being in classes, and am wrestling with finishing well with my classes.