Feet On the Ground

First day of orientation was today. Orientations are never usually that exciting, but I was looking forward to actually getting into the environment. Unfortunately, it was a bit ho hum. I mean, they tell you what to expect but you don’t really get it until you can experience it yourself. So it felt like a lot of yakking about stuff I don’t quite understand. I’ve already been assigned a metric crapton of reading, but I can’t really do it yet until after we’re taught how to brief a case tomorrow. So, like any good nerd, I just watched more Buffy tonight.

I’m a little bummed because I didn’t meet anyone in my class that I really clicked with. I talked to a couple nice girls, but it wasn’t like we just totally hit it off. I’m inclined to think that people might have just been a little reserved since it’s the first day. I was so sleepy this morning that I couldn’t really come up with conversation either, so that didn’t help. I totally did the whole dozing-off-until-your-head-bobs-and-you-wake-up thing in one session. I’m off to a great start, eh?

Tomorrow is a new day, though, and I don’t have to be there quite so early. That helps. Plus we only have stuff to do until noon, and then we go to lunch with our groups so that should be fun. Then there’s a party tomorrow night and I’m getting a mani/pedi on Sunday. I seriously cannot believe I just typed mani/pedi.

I want to look for a church, but I’ve heard that it’s pretty near impossible to find a church with decent music here and that’s my favorite part! I’ve been ruined by my church’s band and choir, I think. It’s so weird to be in a group of people knowing that if I talk about my faith most people won’t have the foggiest idea of what it means. What it really means, not just what they think it means. I feel somewhat thrown off my game.

A phone call from my best friend helped though. And my shoes and necklaces and scarves are all arranged in my new closet, my picture is hung above my wall and my couch will be delivered on Tuesday.

It’s coming together. I’m going to survive. I just really want to make some friends and find where I fit in.

I’m totally saving Burn Notice and Royal Pains on my DVR for Sunday afternoon.

Tags: awkward, law school, trying

I’m listening to Joyce Meyer talking about making peace with yourself. My eternal struggle. I think I do well on it and then I realize that I’ve been in a pattern of self doubt for weeks…or longer. To God’s credit, I’m no longer wallowing in self-loathing. But, oh my gosh, do I doubt myself. All the time.

I’m a nerd. Geek. Whatever. But not in a way that I can actually use. I can’t create something super cool, like a web page or video or some sort of graphic that I could like, prove to someone that I can make decent use of my time. I just love knowledge. I love to Google things out of nowhere just to learn about them. I talk on here about loving story. I get caught up in stories of real life people or characters on TV or in books and I love when they’re in situations completely unfamiliar to me. I love to imagine what I would be like in those situations. I’ve been watching the first season of Dexter…and last night I dreamed about solving an extremely complicated crime. Have I ever really done anything useful with my nerd stuff? Nope. I’ve written a couple things that are sitting in Scrivener and have about 20,000 words so far. Each. For me, that’s HUGE. But not nearly enough to be published, and considering that they’re my first real efforts it’s unlikely that they would be published at all even if they were completed.

So I spend time in my on-screen or on-page worlds, treating these characters as people. Thinking about what makes them tick. Thinking about the people in my real life and what makes them the way that they are. Thinking about my story, my setting, and how I could change things but also thinking about how no one would ever listen to me. When I think about my church, I think about how I could change EVERYTHING there and make it so much better. When I worked for Amazon, I saw how everything was so blasted inefficient and it drove me bonkers. When I look at the city of Huntington, I see how stunted it is and how we NEED something better- but no one is doing anything about it. Yet no one listens to me and I barely to go church anymore because I can’t stand it, I quit my job and I’m moving away.

I wish I didn’t run away. I wish I didn’t live in denial. I met a new boy recently, and I warned him- I’m a nerd. He’s super country. We’re like, total opposites. But I said that I’d try to take it easy on him. I hid it away and tried to find common interests for us to discuss. I didn’t want to scare him away. And then, oh gosh. One day, it happened. We were looking stuff up online and I stumbled over some nerdy things and totally. freaking. fangirled. It was one of the most embarrassing displays of excitement I’ve ever exhibited. After a few minutes, I looked up to see him smirking at me. I stopped mid sentence and played it off with a joke. He wasn’t phased. I was.

Thinking about it takes me back to high school, when I was treated with derision because of things like that. When I tried to hang out with the “cool” people at church and told that fiction was stupid and that watching TV meant that I was not a good steward of my time.

I’m so tired of being made to feel like a loser over what makes me unique.

Hearing Joyce talk about this gives me hope, though. She said that she was always embarrassed by her voice. It’s rough, deep, and loud. She’s not one of those sweet, mousy, quiet women that the church likes so much. She is brash. Has presence. In my opinion, she’s a great speaker and I love her manner. But she used to hate her voice, and felt that it was what would stop her from becoming a success.

Look at her now. She has preached the gospel to millions and is doing absolutely amazing missions work all over the world. God has used her tremendously, especially in my life, and I believe that He caused me to find her podcast at the right time to keep me from committing suicide.

To this day, when she talks to people on the phone they think she’s a man.

I hope, so much, that one day my obsession with story will help people and be used for good. But in the meantime, my biggest obstacle is being okay with being me.

Tags: discomfort, peace, trying

I have a really bad singing voice. It’s nasally and I can’t carry a tune very well, so I don’t sing…unless I’m playing Glee songs in the car. I have to turn the volume up so that the cast drowns me out.

I get really nervous talking in front of people. I get shaky. My pupils constrict, I turn pale and my voice wobbles like I’m getting ready to cry. My throat tightens. My mouth dries. I see people staring at me with blank expressions and I have to fight the urge to run out the door – and I fight it only because I know my legs wouldn’t carry me that far.

So the only voice I have is through writing.

Problem is, I have a need to be brutally honest when I write. I can’t make it nice and fluffy and lovey unless I’m really feeling that way. I’m sarcastic. My verbal filter is riddled with holes. I say things that most Christians are afraid to even think. I write what I feel, which is usually full of pain and confusion.

And then I read the blogs of some AMAZING women. Lindsey Nobles. Bianca Juarez. Anne Jackson. Sarah Markley. Kristin Billerbeck. Fabulous women. Strong women. My role models from afar. I’ve never met them, but I have talked to them all on Twitter, e-mail, or Facebook chat. They all have many reasons to be bitter and question everything they believe, but they get out of bed and fight. Maybe not everyday. But most days. They write about everything, including their struggles, but usually end with a note of hope.

It’s then, that I hate my writing voice more than my singing voice. For a writer, your voice is your self. They can’t be separated. I realize how bitter, how confused, how hopeless I am. How afraid, how insecure. Faithless. Weak. Incapable.

I also realize why THEY are living a much better story than I am. Stories of redemption and passion and overcoming and perseverance and faith. I have no idea how to get my hands on this kind of life.

Yet somehow, their hope is contagious. I want the type of life they lead. I want strength to choke bitterness, courage to overwhelm fear, and love to blast hatred into oblivion. I honestly don’t know if I can ever change. I want to. I hope I can. And for now, I can muster up the willpower to keep trying.

Tags: change, determination, learning, trying, uncertainty

So I wrote that post on hope and then tried to go to sleep. I was almost there, and out of nowhere, both my heart and my thoughts started racing. It makes no sense, and yet it does. As soon as I felt the hope, I also felt the need to capitalize on it and make it all work. I’m really bad at that, if you haven’t noticed.

That’s not the point of hope. Hope is the response to God whispering, “I have something for you.” Hope births anticipation and expectancy and excitement.

Not panic.

I always try. That’s something that Mom and I both use on each other: I try so hard. I’m not saying that we’re supposed to be lazy, but I think it’s kind of a theme in my family, and in women in general. We try and strive and when it doesn’t work, we internalize it and blame ourselves. Then when it comes around again, we try even harder because if it didn’t work the first time, it’s obviously because of something we didn’t do.

So here I am, someone who hears all the time about how smart and beautiful and talented and so many other adjectives that don’t really matter she is, and although that sounds conceited, I’ve grown to see how much those things don’t matter. Oh sure, I’d be extremely distraught if I woke up and all of those qualities were suddenly taken away- I’m honest about my shallowness. But when someone says something like that, it generally makes me want to bust into frustrated tears. I want to start wailing, “SO WHAT?!” All of those compliments imply that I just need to learn how to use those things to my advantage, and I’ll get ahead.

It doesn’t work like that. It isn’t working. It hasn’t, and it won’t.

At least, that’s how I feel.

I think I would be more comforted if someone just said, “You are loved and will be blessed because you simply exist. You’re here, and you’re worth more than can be measured and you don’t even have to try.”

That’s what God did when He sent Gabriel to speak to Mary. She was a poor, uneducated girl who had barely hit puberty and who was a nobody from the middle of nowhere, but she was seen and chosen. She existed. She loved God the best she could. And that was enough.

So why do I keep thinking that more education and more striving is going to fix my situation? If God leads me to law school, it will be because that path is the best one for me…not because it will give me value.

Speaking of which: if the LSAC doesn’t approve me for a fee waiver before next Tuesday, I can’t take the LSAT in December and I’ll have to wait another year to apply for law schools. So…pray for me. That the right thing will happen and I will have peace with whatever happens…and that I won’t try to “fix” it.

Tags: discomfort, learning, trying