A grand finale

It's amazing that I've spent the entire academic year with the same two girls, who have been in all my accounting classes with me and stayed up until one in the morning with me, who have pulled eight- or ten-hour tax research marathons with me, studied with me, researched with me, completed projects and PowerPoints with me, and only just in the past few days am I getting the chance to see who they really are. Doing relaxing things together, having dinner together, talking about literature (not PCAOB literature, or FASB statements, or SOX, or *ahem* the Tax Code). How does that happen? How do you spend such a significant portion of your life with people, and never get to know the other sides of them? How do you manage to call someone a friend when you've never had a discussion with them that doesn't involve consolidating balance sheets or deducting passive losses? How does your life get that out-of-balance?

Anyway, I feel like that stage is over now. I put down my pencil at 10:30 this morning, and it was over--all the cramming, all the stress, all the neglect of Laura as a well-rounded person. Because next year, it won't be this way. When I come back to school in the fall, it will be to finish the last year of my MAcc, but it will also be with a new consciousness of caring for myself and living my life on more than one level. It will be to enjoy the last semester of school with my friends, my last year in Athens...

I needed a break last night, and I went to the Wesley Foundation. Bob and I have been really active there for several years now, but this past semester has made it difficult to be active in anything beyond classwork. As I tried to worship God I just found my head spinning and my heart sick; as I took communion I found myself unable to control the sobs that broke forth from my chest. And I realized that, however hard I've worked this semester, and whatever I've been able to achieve (All A's? I'm not so sure...), it's not been worth losing touch with myself, with my body, with my God. These past few months have been a constant ebb and flow, sometimes being very rewarding and exciting but often waning into frustration and worry and depression. It's time to gain my sense of self again.

My nature writing class helped keep me balanced, helped to remind me that there are aesthetic and artistic facets to my nature--helped remind me that I'm good at something, indeed even called to something, greater than crunching numbers. I'm called to reflect God and to serve Him and to serve His people. I'm called to use the gifts He has given me--the many gifts, the gifts that should be blessings and not burdens. Accounting was not a mistake for me; in fact I am quite certain that it was God's plan for me. But not the only plan. Not the ultimate goal. I'm only twenty-two, and I know there's much more than what I've seen and lived. And I know that each moment, though stressful and impossible, will flee like the dawn and just be a puff of smoke in my memory. I know that my self-attained glory will wither and fade like the grass of the field, and when that happens I better hope I have stored up some treasures in heaven, because we all reap what we sow in the end.

Barbara Kingsolver wrote, in her essay "High Tide in Tucson," that sometimes when she wakes up in the morning she thinks simply, "Let me be a good animal today." It's comforting to know, amid all our creation and striving and bustle, that we humans are really just animals. We're not some great beings over all the earth, and the only greatness we have to achieve is the greatness we burden ourselves with by seeking it. I don't always want to achieve greatness. Sometimes I just want to achieve my calling and my purpose. Sometimes I just want to wake up and breathe in and out and feel the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair. Sometimes I just want to fade among the other inhabitants of this world all around me. Sometimes I just want to be a good animal.

I think that's why I hike, and why I enjoy the earth in general. It refreshes my spiritual self and my physical body; it lets me melt away into the deep woods of Appalachia, until I am just another creature meandering along by the creek at the foot of the millennia-old mountain. I think that's why I run, because it forces me to connect with every part of my body--my respiratory and circulatory system, my ability to endure, my love for outdoors, even my need to find my way back home when I don't know where I am. And I think that's why I write, because it gives me a medium to put these things down in history, make them permanent and real. It gives me something to look back at later, when my life is out of whack again, and say, "Remember the girl I was? What happened to her? How have I come this far--and how can I get back to that place again?" And it gives me a way to share with others, and reaffirm my belonging to a greater humanity, not as someone made great by power or position but, simply, by God and through Him.

Bob is concerned for me. I don't blame him; I would be too, if I saw someone pulling her hair out at two AM every night, consumed by stress and anxiety. But that's not me anymore. That's no way to live, and it's certainly not what was intended for my life all along. With God's help, I will finally put these silly worries behind me, step into my calling and my purpose--I will become a good animal again.

Could it be...?

After all the hard work of the last two or three weeks, all the numbness and the foggy-mindedness and the general unpleasantness that accompanies being a master's accounting student in the last weeks of the semester... After all that wrapped up today at 5:00 PM, with the exception of two final exams, it is hard to know how to react to a moment of rest. I have oscillated so much recently on my opinion of accounting, of school, even of my very life--but now, now that it is all a memory, I am reminded that there is nothing that lasts forever in this lifetime. Nothing hard will endure for very long, because life is not very long anyway. And I feel silly for having worried so much.

But sometimes, you have to worry. Not worry as in feel anxious, but worry as in give a care. I can't not care about school, about my grades or just my general performance. I can't sleep well at night with things hanging over my head that must be done and done well. These past weeks, I've had to worry. I've had to care, had to work harder than I ever thought I could work. And now I know it's all okay. Two finals, and then some exam grading. That's all that's left for me, until I begin my internship in late May.

The rain last night really cooled the weather. I think the earth was parched, dehydrated, overheated. Sometimes I think I can hear the earth panting, here in Georgia in the summertime. And the rain refreshes it like a cold sip of water on a sticky, swollen tongue. The rain refreshed me last night--Bob and I walked through it on the way to the Wesley Foundation, and the misty spray in my hair and over the lenses of my glasses helped me feel alive to the world again. I mean really alive, life that pierces through you. I've really felt numb, dead, like my spirit was a vegetable and I've just been dragging it behind me to all my classes and meetings. But wind and rain on your face--that will wake you up, sure enough. It did for me, at least.

To write, to write... I'll write this weekend. I have things to say. Thoughts like bats, flying haphazardly around, fill my mind right now and bang on the inside of my skull, asking to be let out. Open up, they say, admit to us. I've not been trying to hide my thoughts--I've not even had writer's block. I've simply had other things on my mind that were more pressing.

More pressing than my ultimate calling in this life--amazing thought. Distressing thought. I don't strive for much, but I should really learn to strive for less.

Prioritizing...

I decided today that I'm not going to let my body and my sense of self to take backseat to my school responsibilities. This may seem like a rather obvious conclusion to have come to, but truthfully, I have struggled nearly all my life with putting too much importance on grades and on excelling in school. When I know that no one cares about your GPA in graduate school, why am I so fixated on As, trembling at the very thought of staining my track record with a B in an accounting class? Long after I have graduated and gotten a job and probably moved on to something else, when my grades are long forgotten and many of the technical skills I had once mastered have become dull and rusted, my body and my self-worth, and yes, my God, these things will remain. And while I know that God will have grace with me even in all the time that I do not give to Him (not that this justifies living in a way that less than glorifies Him), my body will constantly remind me how it was neglected and forgotten during my college years. I'm 22--at the peak of my physical shape. I don't want to spend my twenties overwhelmed to the point that I cannot physically exert myself and enjoy breathing so hard my lungs want to burst, or my eyes stinging with perspiration that rolls down my forehead.

I went on a run this evening, a beautiful spring (though practically summer) twilight. I hadn't run in about a week and a half, but before that it had been at least six weeks. Though my run tonight was short--only about 2 miles--it felt so wonderful to get moving and out in the fresh air. Lately I have had it in my head that I was developing a vitamin D deficiency (completely fabricated in my own mind--it would be really hard to shut yourself away from the sun to that degree), and it was a healing experience to be out in the fading light of day, running beneath the honeysuckle that creeps over the sidewalks, through sprinklers and past dads sitting on their front porches with their young daughters playing in the front yard. And I decided that nothing, nothing, not even an A in my advanced accounting class, is worth forgetting and forsaking the exhilaration of working your body. I know that the dividends will be much greater... and I know that I am preserving not only my health and well-being for myself, but am also preserving my body as a temple, a sanctuary to honor the Lord.

As I was walking home from class today, I saw something intriguing--a bright red Jeep Grand Cherokee, pollen-dipped, and on the back of the Jeep a spider web, the most prototypical concentric, undamaged, possibly, that I have ever seen. I think about the times when I have taken note of spider webs in nature... Beneath my mom's climbing jasmine, along infrequently traveled trails through the woods, places serene and inviting to a spider seeking to set its wily trap. But never, in all my experience, on the back of a Jeep. The golden-brown grains of white oak blossoms, which litter the sidewalks all over campus, lay suspended in the adhesive fibers of the web, alongside the salmon-colored, teardrop-shaped wings of maple seeds. The most prominent symbols of the birth and growth embodied in spring, but not a single insect. Nor did I see the spider. Perhaps she built another web elsewhere, not putting much faith in the power of one built upon a brightly painted hunk of metal sitting in a parking lot. I hope she did.

Breathless

I've been so busy and my energy so sapped with all the things I have to do, I don't know how to make it through the next few weeks until the end of school. It's so close, but I can't even think of how close it is because all I can think of is what I have to get done this minute... and that minute...

I wish I could take care of my body better. I want to run. I want to walk. I want to be in the sun. I want to eat more fresh vegetables. But I can't do any of those things like I should, because I cannot invest the time. I feel like I'm losing these days and months of my life. It makes me so sad. I wish I could spend more time with my friends... Especially those who are graduating soon and moving away. I'll look around one day and they'll be gone, and I will have missed their departure, trapped in the cloud of my own breathless life. I wish I would write more, and on my time. Deadlines are sneaking up faster than I can crank out even mildly acceptable junk to turn in, and I cannot do anything that I feel enhances me as a person. I wish I could spend more time in prayer and meditation. When I sit down to seek God intensely, my mind will not leave behind all the things of the day, and all the things coming up for tomorrow. It will not let go of the wishes and dreams that I am constantly having to put on hold, and it will not let go of my sadness and my overwhelmedness.

Excuse me, but I have to go to yet another meeting... Maybe you'll hear from me again sometime in the next month.

Reconciliation

I'm silly. I let myself get beaten down by things that are not important in the end, and that I get little enjoyment from along the way. I tend to exaggerate my worries as well, so that something whose consequences are probably are not dire becomes something of utmost importance to me, and thus a source of fear and regret. All along, I know that those feelings are not rewarding; at the same time I know I am doing my very best in everything I attempt, I have been a good steward of all that has been entrusted to me, as in the parable of the talents. Even if the return is not as great as I hope or expect from myself, the point is that I invest in the things that I should and I am faithful in them, to the end.

The accountant side of me always looks to be busy and to be efficient, and to excel in what I do. If I fail myself, then I have to live with that for the rest of my life, even if I hurt no one else in the wake. I have learned how to manage my time and how to be efficient; I have learned a satisfying work ethic that usually rewards me in the end with a good grade or a sense of accomplishment or a feeling that I am doing something that will have far-reaching influence.

But the artist side of me finds satisfaction more in the side streets along the way--an amazing conversation with this person, a newly-established, deep connection with that person, a wonderful sense of aesthetic pleasure as I stop every few steps and look around me and breathe in the atmosphere of a world that still has much to teach me and many new places to take me. In this vein, I revel in the slowness and the solitude that is found when you step away from all the things I otherwise work so hard to achieve.

Some people find it difficult to reconcile the two ways of being. Can one person be type A and type B all at once? There are times when even I (perhaps especially I) wonder if the parts of who I am are at all compatible. But when I look hard into it all, I come up with the conclusion that all I really want to do is be the best person I can be, live the most fulfilling life I can live. (To put it from a spiritual perspective, to become more Christlike each day of my life.) Sometimes that involves a lot of hard work. I don't mind that; to the contrary, I really love fulfilling my responsibilities and feeling like I have done something good and productive. On the other hand, sometimes living the right life means slowing down to realize what truly is meaningful--to think about the things that have eternal significance. Does accounting have eternal significance? Sometimes--but it's easy to get caught up in the workload and lose sight of the higher goal. Does writing have eternal significance? Usually, I find--but not when I try to force it upon myself as a relaxer, as a tool to unwind. When it comes naturally, when my mind is clear and open to the inspiration that must always precede anything aesthetically pleasing, then I feel the significance of it. Then I feel like I am fulfilling my purpose in this life.

Each of us has many purposes to fulfill, don't we? If you were put here on earth for one reason and one reason only, then wouldn't your life become remarkably dull? But thankfully, most of us have many giftings and many things that move us and change us and fulfill us. The challenge for me is not deciding what my "one great purpose" on earth is, but how to balance my smaller purposes, to finally create a large mosaic of all the different small pieces of glass that I bring to the world. Sometimes, I get out-of-balance; right now, I think I am beginning to find my way back to the right path again.

Oh, to write about nature again

I miss updating this blog almost daily. I miss writing about nature--I miss being in nature! But right now, accounting is sucking the life out of me...

It will briefy come to a close with my corporate taxation test on Thursday afternoon. After that, expect quite a long post from me. In the meantime, I will continue my hermitude, my want for sunlight and for physical activity.

I'd rather be writing!

Finally done

I finished my long creative piece today (except for some polishing), and I have to say that, on the whole, I'm pretty satisfied with it. I think it tells the story I want to tell, and I feel like it uses nature very metaphorically throughout. It gels together better than I thought it would when I started composing all of the random experiences that comprise the piece. It's amazing how effortless it was to tie nature back in as central--because nature really was central to the experiences I had when I was depressed, and it really was central to my healing and my spiritual rebirth.

I'm so excited to edit it and polish it. I just hope I can get far enough removed from it that I'm not looking at it through biased lenses. With accounting as my main focus on Tuesdays, I'm sure the topics of my paper will be pushed far out of my mind...

The poem I posted yesterday was inspired by our reading of Loren Eiseley, though that connection may be difficult to see. I liked how he put his central focus outside of himself and on what the true subject should be, whatever part of nature he was writing about. That's how nature writing should be, and in my poem that's what I was trying to do. I don't even know if my poem made any sense or not.

180 Degrees...

I am only 1.5 hours past completing a gruelingly long accounting exam. It took me three and a half hours to get my numbers to balance, and it dulled my brain to the point that a late-evening excursion to Marble Slab was necessary to restore it to working order... Nothing revives those brain cells like coffee ice cream with Heath Bar and slivered almonds. Yes.

I try not to eat too much junk food. My metabolism is such that I have to generally be very health-conscious or I notice extreme differences. It's annoying and sometimes burdensome to require a meal every four to five hours, when often food is not conveniently available and always I have to be careful about how much I eat--because whether I eat lightly or pack my tummy full, it's a guarantee that in just a few short hours I will feel like I haven't had a bite all day. Anyway, I like to eat healthy--I like believing I keep my body in as close to creation order as I can. I enjoy vegetables and fruit and yogurt and whole grains and water and green tea; I enjoy stretching and Pilates and walking and running (but only when the weather's nice); it's too bad that I also enjoy chocolate and coffee and Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke so much too.

Anyway, to change directions entirely, I was not very happy with my paper about a threat I had encountered from nature. It's hard to write about a jellyfish attack and make it interesting. And it didn't seem quite fair either--after all, I was on their turf. Only a couple of hours after class, the idea came to me that I wish I had written about instead. I should have written about the surf washing away my sandcastles and my childish doodlings at the seashore. I can remember the feeling of impending doom as I watched the tide creeping closer and closer to the marks I had made; I can remember writing things in the sand and hoping that somehow they would stay forever, or at least long enough for another to see them. But the ever-dependable tide would always encroach upon "my" turf and completely efface anything I dared to lay bare in the wet, malleable sand that always yields to the tide.

Part of me wants to rewrite the week's essay and send it out to everyone again. Perhaps I will. Or maybe I will just save the idea for a longer project.