It would have been nice to have all this self analysis and realization come to fruition the day after my last exam. But instead I had to have it now, in the middle of my final semester. I suppose philosophy cannot be timed.
I’ve been reading Karen Armstrong’s memoirs (she has written two of them and I recommend both). Her experience with the church led me to relive my own memories of my life with my family and the church. I broke away from both at around the same time. I imagine this was traumatic, but I have no idea what exactly is traumatic…I would need some sort of scale to assess exactly how much I was affected by all this, I guess this is the bean counter in me talking. While I made conclusions on how I would eventually deal and live with my decisions, it clearly wasn’t an easy choice.
While I wasn’t overly religious, the concept of a God was something very real to me. Also, I now have begun to understand the role that religion can have in one’s life. A need for socialization and community is something that a religious environment has the capacity to provide.
So besides coming to terms with decisions I made several years ago, I’ve also begun to wonder about the all important question: what is the meaning of life. Actually, I haven’t. I’ve been mainly thinking about what I would like to do with my life.
I’ve always played around with the idea of being a writer. I originally wanted to go to college to major in literature because I enjoyed Dickens, Bronte, Twain and other such novelists. I wanted to immerse myself more in literature and thought an English degree would enable me to do that. But for a variety of reasons, I never did study literature in the depth I wanted to. It probably is a good decision because I dislike organized study of literature in the manner academia tends to approach it.
For a brief while I wrote for the college newspaper and enjoyed the experience. I joined a writing group and submitted exercises and critiqued other people’s work as was expected. The writing group experience was also enjoyable - for the most part. For the past several months, for the past year actually, I found myself returning to my main passion: reading. I stopped reading for several years when I got hit with financial problems, and other problems. Reading was the last thing on my mind. Then I got a full time job that was interesting but very draining. After quitting that job I returned to reading and found that I had really missed reading so much. Although I don’t read as much fiction as I used to, the subjects I have approached and read has given me a lot of pleasure. So I thought about writing non fiction material. And since I am terrified of financial insecurity, I am afraid to pursue writing as a viable option.
But I’ve been thinking about how writing would fit in with my personality. I actually need very little materially and monetarily. I enjoy spending long periods of time thinking by myself (another big revelation this year was that I am both an introvert and a loner, although a happily married loner).
I promised myself that this would be my last horrible year in college. And with that promise I decided to postpone everything to focus on school. So any additional thoughts on being a writer and the actual feasibility of it will have to wait for another 57 days.
