Speed

I am always in a hurry.

Or avoiding being in a hurry, not by slowing down and relaxing but by avoiding and moping.

I live my life primarily in one of those two states.

My dad commented once, in reference to my tendency on weekends to crash and sleep 10-12 hours a day, that I either have to be doing something useful or fun or I have to be sleeping. I can't just be.

Lately, I think I have to be just useful or sleeping. I don't really even enjoy fun that much.

If I'm not working, I'm feeling bad about not working. And I don't process my feelings well. A healthy response to worrying about the clothes piled on the top of the hamper or the junk cluttering the counter would be to clean them up. A healthy response to stress about school work would be to do it and stop worrying about it, recognize everyone needs a break sometimes and just take one, or, the best idea, stop doing and just be and pray and remember that "unless the Lord builds the house the workers build in vain" and "cease striving and know that He is God." 

Instead, my usual non-working response is crashing. I nap. I veg in front of facebook, Pinterest, or the television and hate myself for wasting time the whole time I'm doing it. I whine, and I wallow. Somehow, I have the audacity to feel sorry for myself, which-- excuse me-- is a supremely shitty thing to do when my life is as wonderful as it is. I'm really a piece of crap to even dare for one moment not to rejoice.

 The problem is, it seems to me, is that I let it get too far. I let the need to be "useful" and "efficient" drive me, refusing to do anything fun (because, like I said, I've grown into such a tighta--, that it's almost more effort to enjoy things than to work) until I'm past the point of no return. It's like I can't rechart the course. I just crash.

I kept thinking of this word speed tonight as I enjoyed, truly, giddily, kind of annoyingly enjoyed a four hour dinner with my friends. Like, seriously was hyper and laughed and wanted to be there and stay there.

I was sitting there, grateful for my friends, feeling my eyes opening to things I haven't been paying attention to, enjoying myself and wondering what is so all-fired important about speed.

Because, you see, speed isn't just about work for me. It's about life. I realize I'm only twenty-five. I realize I'm the youngest person in my school building and still have that "young" air about me. I realize, assuming an average lifespan is in store for me, I still have a lot of years left.

But I look at twenty-five and can't believe I'm already a half a century old. It's an idealistic stretch of my life-expectancy even to think anything I face now is a classic John Mayer "quarter-life crisis." I think about "Stop This Train" and actually feel myself playing "the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun." How did I get old enough to identify with that?

I don't know what I expected by twenty-five, but somehow I feel like I should have done something better by now. I feel like I should have figured it out by now. I should have the hang of things. 

Maybe it's my slew of college friends just finishing degrees but off to hugely bright and amazing things while I'm still in the same job with the same undergraduate degree I had three years ago. Maybe it's the realization that I'm a Mrs. and that babies are a legitimate possibility in my life in the next few years, marking the end of this and the start of something that forever alters everything, the thought that I should make sure and do everything great in my me-life before it becomes a family life... should it become a family life? Because how much more could I do in life if I never made that forever choice...? 

Maybe it's just my life-long fear of just being mediocre.

That's probably it. I graduated from my "small pond" as a National Merit Scholar and a valedictorian like I had dreamed, I graduated from my "bigger pond" summa cum laude (but just had to look up how to spell it, so how smart am I really?).  I have somehow managed to achieve things like that, things that I thought would help me prove to myself that I'm not mediocre, that I wasn't just good in the small surroundings of Cocke County, Tennessee but that I'm really good. Everything I've "accomplished," I've accomplished at least partially with the motive of proving that I'm good.

And then I look at myself, teaching in a slightly farther west, ever-so-slightly more suburban place just like where I grew up, good but not as good as other people around me, certainly not the best, even in my new "small pond," and I wonder if I'm "living it right," if this is really the best use of my life, and I fear being mediocre. I mean, I can't even be as good as I want at teaching and taking care of a house and keeping up a few friendships. My prospects for writing the next American classic or having a teacher movie made about me or changing the face of education with my renowned research and practice aren't looking so hot at this point. Because, I'm twenty-five, and I haven't really even started anything amazing yet, and if I were to have any chance of achieving the kind of greatness I dream about, I should have already been well on my way.

And as I read what I'm writing, I see I, I, I... all obsessed like I've always been with myself.

I think my intentions are somewhat good-- I really don't want to waste the preciousness that is life-- but the problem is that I keep thinking, time after time, no matter how much it is proven otherwise, that the way not to waste life is to keep looking for ways to live it better, to keep forcing myself into improvements, to move beyond, to keep myself in check and barrel through out of the mediocre.

Speed. 

Speed.

I want life to happen fast. I want to be everything now. 

Fact: I will never be everything or probably even anything that awesome.

And I need to embrace that because fighting it and thinking that the goal of life is to be remembered for being useful, efficient, intelligent, revolutionary, great, whatever it is I think I have to be is getting in the way of life, and it is making my supreme guide for my life my ego, my appearance, my accomplishments.

Jason summed up my viewpoint on life pretty perfectly once. He said with me it's "ideal or no deal."

I don't like that life isn't perfect. I don't like that other people aren't perfect. I don't like that I'm not perfect.

But I have to quit slamming all the doors on everything that's not perfect, have to stop overlooking friends who aren't my ideal companions, have to quit skipping over things and people in my speed to rush toward some elusive delusion of perfect.

Tonight, I'm realizing I'm missing a lot by imposing my ideals on myself and everyone around me, my church, my friends, my students. And when they don't live up, I just don't want them, and I miss what's good about them... and worse, I build up more and more the lie that they're somehow not really worthy of more of my time and attention because they're not my ideal, like that's really the goal in life, to be Natalie Coleman's ideal. Pft.

I've got a lot of arrogance to get over. Lest any friend reading this feel the need to tell me I'm more awesome than I think or I really have accomplished great things, I will say this point-blank: don't. The last thing I need is more ammunition in the lethal artillery of "how great I am" I have in my head. Believe me, I have far too high an opinion of myself, my accomplishments, and my perspective already. Don't get me wrong-- it's not all bad-- but it's not God either, and it's in the way of a lot of things that are a whole lot better than the stuff that I think is so important.

I just want to remember that... which is why I'm going to try to lay off the speed and urgency a little bit and remember that no amount of speed will get me to the finish when I'm spending all my time running my own race with standards that I invented for a prize that only I think matters.

I'll probably be a narcissistic jerk again tomorrow, even if it's only in my head and people don't know, but I'm praying to be on the right track again and stay on it this time.