Long weeks lead to cranky contemplation.

"Now the curtain's coming up

The audience is still

I'm struggling to cater for

The space I'm meant to fill."

-(KT Tunstall, "False Alarm")-

As I said before, this semester is one of reconciliation--it's a time now to do things right. This week, I began to see how much pressure that puts on me. I feel like so many people are watching me--my family, my friends, my classmates, my professors, the people I live with, my Terra Firma group--and I don't know what to do. I don't know what they expect me to do. I feel like I'm fumbling around aimlessly in front of them.

At the same time, I'm having a really hard time answering the question of what I'm supposed to do, where this point in my life fits into the grand scheme of it all. It seems to me like all I've been doing at school is absorbing a wealth of information and doing absolutely nothing with it. People have told me that this is what college is for, this is what I should be focusing on now. I disagree. If that's the case, then no one would accomplish anything in their lives, ever, because we're always learning. Learning isn't an excuse to stop doing.

I'm confident that there will come a point where I'll apply (most of) what I've been learning in classes. I'll start using what I learned in last semester's Spanish class on Monday when I start Spanish 2. I'll use the knowledge from Intro to Linguistics on Tuesday in Sociolinguistics. I've learned a lot outside of classes, too. I've learned about myself, how I handle different situations, how I react based on circumstances, what I value, what I want, what I need, why I possess some of my odd qualities...but what has this led to? It's answered questions, but also created more frustration and generated new questions. It's led to doubt. As for my friendships, I'd say they've suffered. And all for the sake of learning?

J-term has worn me down. I'm exhausted. I get pretty self-defeating when I'm this tired, but it's shed light upon the fact that last semester's struggles aren't nearly over. The difference is I know now that I can't just focus on how I can produce the optimal situation for myself out of what I've been given. That just doesn't work. Being that self-centered, while natural and understandable in this situation, is still inexcusable and completely unfulfilling.

How can I benefit others? How can I improve my relationships? What do I have to do in order to make progress in life rather than sit here wallowing in an overload of information? I'm not really sure where to start. If I may end with another KT Tunstall quote...

"I need to be patient

And I need to be brave

I need to discover how I need to behave

I'll find out the answers when I know what to ask

but I speak a different language and everybody's talking too fast."

("Miniature Disasters")