I am emotionally and also physically exhausted. Fortunately one of the reasons for that is because I've been working a lot so I've taken today and tomorrow off work for a retreat. I'm thinking that there is too much I'm trying to cram into my life. Work, part time uni, wife, music (I play guitar) friends, family, inlaws (who I like), this blog, churchy type stuff which is now in three parts and I'm about to be a Dad. Others might be able to deal wit this quite adequately but for me it just seems too much. Reflecting I've discovered 4 things.
1. I can't work with my feelings very well. I work well with behaviours and ideas but not so well with feelings. I just push them down in to tiny little ball and hope they don't spring back. However they always do.
2. I find people draining. Even people I like I find draining and after a while I want to run and hide in my cave where I can build guitar pedals or do gardening. Lately this cave period is taking up more and more time.
3. I'd like to change the world and make it a better place (in some even small way) but I'm just not sure I have the stamina or energy to do that.
4. I've realised that I haven't ever really built on anything that I've done in the past. Be that Music, Youth Ministry, Church consultancy, Expressing Christianity in a new and fresh way or pretty much anything. These are all things that I do well but I don't have people asking me "hey are you still doing church consultancy type work" or "are you still doing presentations about Xy?" Even though every year since doing those presentations I have had kids come up to me and tell me what they were about some 5 years after I'd made the presentation. It seems that every three years or so I just go in a completely different direction almost completely unrelated to where I was. This is frustrating and I'd like to work out why this has happened or why I have let it happen.
So as a result I'm dropping out of my uni course and I'm just going to sit do some self reflection for a while.
5 comments:
You sound a lot like me! My girlfriend is the biggest people-person I've ever met. She thrives off being around people, talking, and being relational. Although I enjoy people's company, I can only take so much of it before I wanna be alone and do my own thing.
I also am not the best with my feelings. Even thought I've gotten a lot better with them over the past several years, I don't "feel" nearly as much as my girlfriend.
Sounds like you indeed could benefit from a break. :)
(By the way, I came across your blog today through technorati.com)
Thanks Tim, always nice to be reassured I'm not alone on this. :) By the way how did technorati.com lead you to this blog?
Thanks!
I try to keep up with youth ministry blogs through technorati.com and yours popped up today. :)
I hope you're feeling a bit better a few weeks later. I know the feelings you're talking about, particularly about being exhausted by people. (Us poor introverts.)
I don't even know if you've had the baby yet, but my prayers are with you as you and Nyree go through this wonderful time.
Well done on keeping up such an interesting and wide-ranging blog. (modblog has been down for a couple of weeks now; I think it might be time to migrate!)
Hey Nathan,
Yes I am feeling better - just in time for the baby - which should happen in the next day or two. Thanks for the compliment - like most blogs I don't get lot's of comments so it's always hard to know how many people are reading and what they think.
I can reccomend Blogger if you want to migrate and don't want to pay any money for the privalidge. The templates I've found reasonably easy to manipulate the only thing missing is categories for different types of posts.
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