I am thankful for so many things this Thanksgiving holiday weekend.I am thankful for the wonderful Thanksgiving meal that my lovely roommate cooked for us (all by herself!) and the fact that she insisted I stay out of the kitchen which left me with a completely free conscience to drink beer and watch the Lions lose to the Patriots. The first half of decent play and the second half collapse left me with a feeling of familiarity and warmth, though the warmth may be attributable to the beer. I am thankful for the fact that my cousin came up from DC and had dinner with us, creating a lovely 5 person Michigander Thanksgiving including Holly, her mom and aunt, and me and my cousin. I am thankful for the game Catch Phrase and the fact that Holly's mom spent several minutes with the word 'tiara' on the tip of her tongue and while she tried to think of it spouted off 'tortilla' and 'taco' before coming to the correct one.Finally, I am thankful for so much of this Michigan State football season. The season has truly been a great one and the fact that I got to watch them clinch their 11th win of the season for a share of the Big Ten Title is simply a delicious creamy layer of icing on this lovely cake that was this weekend. Good start to the holiday season? I'd say so.
Back when I actually used to write on here, I wrote a lot about honesty. Lately, I have a lot of trouble writing because writing only feels good when I'm honest. Yet, I constantly feel the urge to not be completely forthcoming, and my writing ends up feeling fake.
I wrote so much about how courageous it was to be honest about where you were at. I lived it, too. I wrote about being in a new scary city and all of the life changes I was going through and I felt good about that. But lately, its become a lot harder to be honest about where I am at... mostly because I hate admitting that I'm scared.
When I type it out, I immediately want to delete it. Not only because it seems stupid but because it seems weak. Why do I have to admit on a blog that I'm scared? Keep your thoughts to yourself, Shawn, my mind tells me, it isn't anyone's business. But while this is true, that hasn't been working out so well for me. I've spent most of the past year pretending that I'm not scared and its backfiring. Logically, I'm not scared. Logically, I think everything will work out just fine. I can't see it exactly, but I do logically believe that it will. Did I say logically? But emotionally, I'm scared out of my mind that things with my career wont work out, and I wont be around people that I care about soon enough. Every small little thing that goes wrong makes me think these fears will come true, even though I believe they probably wont, and then I get mad at myself for responding in that way. Helpful, I know.
The major push in my life right now is getting through the end of the race, that is, grad school. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing a great job of it, but most of the time, I feel like I'm too scared to admit I'm scared, and it leads me to spend a ton of time pretending that I'm not instead of just living my life as I am.
Again, it isn't working.
So this is me, going back to what worked before, with another push for honesty. Logically, I believe it will be fine, but logic just ain't cuttin' it. Guess its time to let the emotional side out again. Emotional ups and down are what being human is all about right? Look out, Philly...
