The Day After

For those of you looking for "THE" post, it's one below.

Yesterday was a pretty good day.  Already coming out of the cloud a bit.  Envisioning possible new futures, which is something I honestly haven't done for a long time.  Getting myself used to the idea of being a student again.  Don't get me wrong, I like taking classes. But...it is a source of a recurring unpleasant dream.

Most people have the 'I'm in my underwear' dream, or the 'I try to run but my feet won't go fast enough' dream.  My version has always been, I'm in college, taking a class, and I suddenly am aware that I've had months and months to work on this paper, it's due tomorrow, and I haven't even done the necessary reading let alone started writing it.  Not enjoyable in the least.  Steph makes fun of me because I start working on papers and projects as soon as I can.  She's always been a procrastinator.  She thinks I'm a dork (which, duh...) but the fact is, I just hate having that thing hanging over me.  I want it done.  I like writing, but the blank page is intimidating.  Especially when it's an assignment. 

But aside from that, I like the idea of going back to class.  And somehow, amazingly, having sat down and crunched the numbers a bit, the finances for this seem to be a lot less grim than I had thought.  Yeah, taking out another student loan is not what we wanted to do, but we have a lot of money put away which we can now put to good use.  Not thrilled about draining the reserves but...that's what they're there for, right?

But what I really wanted to talk about was that this morning, an odd thing happened.  A wonderful thing.  For almost two years now, waking up has been a stressful event for me.  I think I may have even mentioned it in a post a ways back.  Sometimes I wake up and realize that my mind is already going 90 mph obsessing about my situation.  I literally have started worrying before I woke up.  But even worse were the times when I would have a brief moment of amnesia - waking up, my mind truly empty and at rest...and then invariably, within 5 seconds, I could feel the weight of the situation clamp down on my peace and drain it from my system.  It's become a routine and I hardly noticed it any more.  But it was like a grey cloud cover on my day.  It's hard to recover from that.

This morning, my mind was already going when I woke up, out of habit.  It was running all the old scenarios and concerns from a week ago.  But then, for the first time in over a year, I remembered what was REALLY happening, and...the weight LIFTED.  I felt better, not worse.  "Oh yeah, I don't have to worry about that anymore."  It was a bit...euphoric. 

So I think if there was any doubt about this being the right thing to do, it's already fading away. 

In a rush this morning, gotta run.  More later perhaps.  God bless.
Matt