I think what I was, rather clumsily, going for in this post was a sense that I have had a history of choosing temporary freedom (from the constraints of a grad program, a city, a job, etc.) over the long term freedoms that can come from sticking with something and seeing it through – whether that is being an office manager or a grad student/academic. Because my emotional schema seems at odds with everyone being so proud of my choices, I experience a weird kind of disassociation that I’m still, obviously, struggling to find a way to express.

Ok, had more to say, but there is a little mouse running around my room so I need to go try to figure out how I’m going to catch it!

After I went to grad. school in Cambridge(for clinical psychology) I was unfulfilled because it was shamelessly easy (never attributed this to my intelligence or skill level) and I moved to California to enter a spiritual psych. program. After one month, my disillusionment with talk therapy, took me to Florida to study yet again. What revealed itself to be almost cultish and after much sacrifice, I returned to Newport with no more, or less, than what I left with a year earlier! I have spent the last year consciously practicing self-acceptance after my intense 3 years of self-imposed wandering, just around grad. school. What now? After reclaiming my misplaced self-acceptance, I have a perspective that is more gentle and I am no longer looking for how I am short on skills, intelligence and ability. It’s been tough for me to put down the bat that I have been beating myself up with. The same bat that my family used against me, albeit unconsciously. I am tired and I never “deserved” any of this so: “why me?” I have delved into the role of karmic patterns in relationships which also reflect the state of the relationship we have to ourselves. This insight has helped me understand that thing inside that keeps me from my self and my delivering my own happiness.

I think that it is wonderful that your family has given you the peace that they have in not beating on you about your path. Maybe I had it good when others were “doing” it for/to me. Only until I realized that I had carried-on the family tradition was I able to consciously stop! Maybe you are in this with yourself and it is up to only you to determine the answer. You are being provided with little resistance to push against, whereas atleast I had a “tormentor” to battle. Good luck in finding an internal balance. This is a gift that only you can give to yourself. Your family, it seems, has given all that they can and they seem to trust you to find your truth. Your truth is whatever YOU decide that it is and then for you sustain that.

It surprises me when I realize how much energy I expend by twisting and turning my path, when I also possess the ability for it to be easier! Take care, Meghan

Should you quit your temp job and seek out a “real” 9 to 5? Maybe. There is definitely something nice about bringing home a living wage and having a little left over to buy nice things and go to nice places. But it also definitely restricts your time to be creative. And how many people really find that job that they are so passionate about that they love what they are doing and wake up in the morning dying to get to work to get started?

It is always easier to dispense advice than to live by it. I would love to quit my job and make a living as a freelance writer, living wherever in the world I want, as long as I have access to the internet for research and deadlines, but I have a job…and it’s hard to give it up as you make more and more money and get more and more responsibility. I envy you for not giving in to what is expected by our culture and continuing to pursue your dreams.

Anyway, I’m working on very limited sleep (the launch scrubbed, so we were up 1/2 the night), so forgive me if this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Now, get back to the grindstone and write something!!