I’ve always been one to go to sleep as soon as my head is snug in my pillow. Last night it took me over an hour to fall asleep. I’ve been up since three, and after two hours of struggling, I’m giving up the fight. It’s a good time to turn to blog-therapy.
I don’t do car metaphors that often, but wheels spinning in the mud is one way to describe my current state of mind. Work stress continues to accumulate by daily accretion. I realize after much reflection that I’m expected to do two jobs well and the end result is that I am mediocre at both.
This conflict of expectations dominates other areas of my life as well. I want to be a top-notch programmer and IT manager, but I also want to be the sort of graduate student who gets into top-tier PhD programs. And I want to be a good friend, a passionate activist, a successful author and consistent, quality blogger. Most of all, I want to be a dependable and supportive father and husband.
I don’t understand why I always have to feel so conflicted. My idealism, the high expectations I place on myself, and my inability to settle for doing anything half-assed means I’m never satisfied with anything I commit to doing. I deceive myself into believing that I have the capacity to take it all on. And then I fall. Hard.
The worst of it is when I release my frustration on those dearest to me. Jana and I had a rare argument earlier this week, in which I think I unleashed my own insecure self-loathing critiques of myself on her (thereby violating my first great commandment and regular mantra, “Thou shalt not be a jerk”). Jana’s pain and the resulting emotional chill between us makes the rest of my worries seem worthless by comparison.
I need to take my own advice from a challenge that I issued a while back: I need to let go. I need to learn that I can’t do it all (at least not at once), and that even though it feels like I’m cutting out my own flesh, I need to amputate some of my expectations. And I think what needs to go the most is my dream to become a professor.
I’ve wanted to become a scientist since kindergarten, and I modified this desire while serving my LDS mission to becoming a professor who focused more on human relations. The specifics have shifted over time–my first aborted attempt at grad school was in international relations, and now my focus is on religion. I’ve convinced myself several times over the past twelve years that this isn’t the right path for me or my family, but it’s time to make the cut permanent. The dream has grown gangrenous and needs to be sliced away before it poisons everything else. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to overcome earlier failures. It’s time for me to stop looking back and start moving forward.
It’s not all as bleak or as melodramatic as I’m making it out to be. And this a choice I’ve struggled over for months, if not years. But it’s a significant decision, and I need to give myself permission to euthanize this ailing dream and to mourn it. In the next couple of days, I’ll speak in more positive terms about where I’d like to take things, but for now I’ll leave you with this poem from Langston Hughes:
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.Or does it explode?
Fortunately, I have dreams to spare.
Note: I am 100% committed to completing my Master’s degree–only one semester and a thesis left, if all goes well.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Elise // May 16, 2007 at 8:31 am
If only there were 36 hours in a day, or if we could stop sleeping…..
I’m glad to hear you have been able to set priorities and make choices about where you’d like to spend your time. The insecurities you express hit very close to home - I also find it hard to live up to my own expectations and live with the desire to fulfill many ambitions while knowing that my lifetime isn’t long enough to do so.
You had me worried there for a few moments that you were dropping out of your master’s degree program. It’s great that you’ll be able to finish it! Maybe you’ll get your PhD in a few more decades when the kiddies are grown and you are able to retire from the day job…..
2 Bored in Vernal // May 16, 2007 at 8:38 am
One more reason why I can’t give up the idea of an Eternity where there is enough time to do everything we ever wanted to do.
When I get there, I will play the cello.
3 Elaine Frei // May 16, 2007 at 12:00 pm
It is generally a good thing, I’ve found, to come to the realization that one cannot do everything and that one cannot do all the things we do perfectly. Removes a lot of stress from life.
I say that as a recovering perfectionist (I don’t believe in astrology; on the other hand I’m a Virgo and it has me pegged just about right :P). I used to drive myself crazy that if I didn’t do everything perfectly, no one would like me. Well, I know where I got that perception, but that is another story for another time. Anyway, part of my recovery was realizing that the people who like me will like me even if I make mistakes once in awhile. The other part of it was realizing that since not everyone is going to like me anyway, I should stop trying to act like they will if I can just manage to be perfect enough. I’m still not all the way there; I tend to nit-pick details, which serves me well in my writing but in the rest of life…not so much. But, I’m working on it, so maybe someday…
I, too, was worried as began to read this that you were going to ditch grad school. Good for you for realizing that while you don’t want to go farther with it right now, that you’ve put too much work into it to just stop. But good for you, too, for having the strength to prioritize when you need to. Too many people haven’t added that skill to their toolbox yet. Goodness knows, I didn’t learn it until I was in my late 30′/early 40s…at that time, going to school full time and working two or three jobs at the same time sometimes made it essential if I wanted to avoid the asylum.
4 Miko // May 16, 2007 at 1:03 pm
:-/ If there’s anything we can do, let us know! (Did your hair turn black when you went emo?)
5 Mark // May 16, 2007 at 2:10 pm
There is great freedom in learning to let go!
6 John // May 16, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Thanks everyone, for your support and encouragement–especially to those of you wanting me to stay in school. Promise me you’ll kick me in the pants if I try to drop out.
Thanks, Miko, for virtually hanging out with me a bit. I only get emo online.
I wish I could fit into emo-boy jeans, though…
7 Anonymous // May 16, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Removed by the request of the comment author.
8 John White // May 17, 2007 at 12:52 pm
pilgrimgirl: Thanks for putting voice to my unease.
John: I don’t think it was your car analogy that I found disturbing. It was more the finality imagery. Not every door needs to be closed. Sometimes we just turn away from them for a while.
9 John // May 17, 2007 at 4:10 pm
John, it’s the finality is what I’m going for. I can’t describe how much anguish this dream, struggling half-heartedly for years, has cost me (and those around me). I have other dreams. This one is suffocating the others. I can adapt. I can take the meta-aspects of my professor goal (teaching, writing, studying) and recombine them, and give them new life. But this half-life or continually postponed life that I’m living now–i don’t have the endurance for anymore.
10 John White // May 18, 2007 at 7:45 am
Half-life?! Now it’s post-apocalyptic imagery?!