All over the place

I feel as though time is speeding up. It seems like just yesterday that I was walking down the aisle at my college graduation, and yet here I am approaching two months later and it feels like it has flown by.

I still don't know what I'm doing, not really. I'm going to call the seminary tomorrow and chat with the admissions person, but somehow I have a hard time seeing any possible way to be financially responsible and still attend school this fall.

If I don't attend then I have to try to find a more permanent living situation, I have until October to find a more permanent job. I have to figure out if I can be a "student" on my parents' health insurance if I take one graduate level class. I have to figure out what to do recreationally for the next year, I can think of a few things but even so.

On the other hand, things that I assumed were given or at least real possibilities are beginning to fall away. I'm left wondering how I'm going to make it through the next year, no matter what. 

At the same time, my life right now has been an adventure. I rear-ended someone at an intersection a couple days ago. He started going and then slammed on his brakes for no reason, just as I looked away for half a second. It was unbelievable as we got out and chatted when he told me that his car was a rental and therefore he didn't really care about the damage.

In a few days I'm going to have to move from my townhouse to another house with some friends, but as it stands I have to be moving out by the last week of August or so. 

My driver side window has come off of its mechanism inside, and now it slips around wildly inside the door. 

I got a phone call the other day from our translator in Cambodia, he wanted to let me know that he talked to the kids at the orphanage and wanted to let me know that they missed us. I periodically think back to those three weeks, and wonder how they've changed me. I don't even know, I'm sure that it did but for the moment I can't nail down what changed. 

Choices

I am faced with a choice that could easily affect vast portions of my life in the near and far future. This is not a choice that I sought, or one that I am particularly looking forward to making.

It is perhaps easiest to start at the beginning and work my way to the present as it will make the the "why" of the decision more clear.

In February I applied to attend the Pacific School of Religion this fall, to begin work on my Master of Divinity degree. I applied well before the priority deadline, both for acceptance and for financial aid. Part of the application is a number of recommendation letters from current professors. I handed out all of the forms to various professors, sent off my transcript and began the waiting process. A number of my professors informed me that they had sent the letters and were eager to hear whether or not I had been accepted. Unfortunately I didn't know, I kept not hearing back from the school. Finally I called the admissions office to find out what was going on, and found that a particular professor had yet to fill out his recommendation and that it was keeping my file from being processed. I immediately confronted the professor to find out what was going on, to which I got a sheepish "I should get around to that, and other students' as well."

Fortunately I was able to find another professor to write the recommendation and fax it in that same day, so as to begin the process.

In the end I received word of my acceptance immediately before graduation, and just a couple days before my mission trip to Cambodia.

When I got back from Cambodia I had finally received my financial aid letter, which I promptly opened and began to take in. If I were to accept the full amount of aid listed it would more than double my current loan load, taking it from a reasonable and doable amount for clergy/ non-profit worker and putting it squarely in the realm of terrifying.

I spent the next two nights sleepless and stressed out, how could I possibly rationalize and reason my way to accepting these loans. Granted, I could reduce them a bit with a scholarship from the Disciples Seminary Foundation but only to simply doubling my current loan load. At one point the stress of it was such that I began tearing up simply because it was too overwhelming to deal with.

One of the struggles I had was that getting my acceptance late meant that I couldn't apply for outside scholarships. (Everything requires having actually been accepted.)

I began to ponder something that a friend of mine had talked about, someone who was in a very similar situation due to the same professor. He talked about deferring attendance to seminary one academic year (which is permissible) in order to reapply for financial aid before the priority deadline, as well as apply for various outside funding sources.

My first response when I thought of that was that there was no possible way for me to do that, going to seminary is what I've planned on and felt called to do for a couple years, why would I possibly change or delay that now?

I began to ponder it though, realizing that attending school with the loan load could easily lead to financial ruin down the road. Taking a year to recuperate from my experience at NCC might do me good. It would certainly give me the opportunity to explore areas within my field of interest, particularly outside the church, an area I've not explored extensively in the realm of human rights. I could save money and better prepare myself for PSR. I would be able to reapply for financial aid as well as apply for outside scholarships. It would give me a break from academia, which no matter what I tell myself I am beginning to be burnt out on.

It would mean changing my plans, everyone I've talked to knows what I am planning on doing this fall and where. I don't change plans of this magnitude often, if ever. To me it would feel like I was letting everyone, myself included, down in some way.

But on the other hand it is the financially responsible course of action, it will allow me to further narrow my field of interest. I could explore new areas of ministry, in the traditional church setting or otherwise. I could experience relatively true "independence," without the crutch that a small college can be.

I do not know what I am going to do, this is a huge decision that will be down the road a bit. There is not a huge hurry to make any choices right now, but I will have to make the choice, certainly within the coming few weeks.


I do not know what to do.

Looking ahead

A friend who is leaving soon asked me if I'd given any real thought to moving down to California. My first instinct was to say, "Of course I have, why wouldn't I have given it any thought?"

I began to think back though, and I haven't really given it any thought. I haven't even made an effort to get at the e-mails I need to print off and send back in to get my financial aid. Aside from a quick thought here about how to get stuff down to Berkley and how to get myself down there, I haven't spent any time at all processing the fact that in 2 and a half months my life will change dramatically. I will leave behind friends that I've made over the last four years, I will leave behind a state I have lived in for more than half my life. 

The past few days have been spent either sleeping, eating, zoning out watching TV and movies or drinking. They've mostly blurred together and I can't really distinguish between them. Looking back, I think I may have been subconsciously escaping the realities of my current and upcoming life situation. I feel that very shortly my temporary shelter I've built is going to come crashing down and the full extent of the changes in my life will shake the core of my being. 

I confided to another friend today that I'm terrified at the prospect of moving to California. I'm going to have to build up a base of friends from the ground up, something I haven't done since the seventh grade. I'm going to be in an entirely new living arrangement, with a new home and a new roommate for the first time ever. I'm going to be enrolled in classes that will challenge me and force me to think, something that hasn't been particularly consistent over the last four years. 

As much as I welcome a shift in my setting and going to a different ideological climate, this transition is not going to be easy. With my friends and God to lean on, I think that everything will go as smoothly as can be expected. 

It just doesn't make it any easier.

Ahh

So, today ended much better than it began.

Miserable day

So, I woke up this morning and felt like crap. (My fault, but that aside...)

Watched TV and then had lunch. 

I realized that I don't know how I am going to pay for anything next month, since I'm starting work a week later.

No one really responded to any text messages I sent out asking if people want to do anything, the only person who responded was in Washington.

All of this has placed me into a state of in which I find it virtually impossible to think about what I'm going to say tomorrow when I speak at my church.

I don't have the pictures that I was going to use during my talking.

I remember thinking at the orphanage about how I needed some Anthony time, I don't think I realized how much I'd come to be used to be surrounded by people though. There was a time when being alone all day wouldn't have phased me, now I'm finding it to be truly miserable. This is easily the worst day I've had since we got back, and I felt like venting about it.

Whoa

So, being back from Cambodia isn't exactly what I thought it would be. 

It's nice to be able to lay in bed and surf the internet, much like I'm doing now. It's incredible to have a bed that is comfortable and a cell phone that does more than sit in a pocket of my luggage, but it's still not what I imagined. Somehow I thought it would be more exciting to be back, but so far it's been er, not. 

Every time I eat the food explodes out of me. I can't get decent sleep for anything. I'd pictured myself spending tons of time with friends, but that hasn't really happened. I keep noticing little things about the way of life here that catch me off guard. 

I think part of me is still emotionally drained from the trip, which would account for some of the blah feeling, but even so it isn't fun. I thought that having an apartment all to myself would be the best thing in the world, but I got back to find out that my rent will be going up $50 next month and that being all alone in your home actually kind of sucks. 

The job that I was expecting to start on Monday isn't going to start until the following Monday, giving me a week of nothing to do while everyone is working. I still can't get into my NCC e-mail so I really have no idea what is going on with my seminary attending process. I find myself easily irritated and irrationally frustrated with small things that I really shouldn't give a second thought to. I keep getting hit with bouts of loneliness that I'm not expecting.

And yet despite all this not everything is bad. I have designs to hang out with people. I got a different car to replace the one that has been broken for a couple months. My electric bill was the lowest it has ever been. I think that I'm making positive progress with processing Cambodia. I was able to get my living room cleaned and and it is now livable. 

I don't know what to do, I suppose the only option is to give everything time to work out. Doesn't make it any easier knowing that though.