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hi, Internet. remember me? I know it’s been a while, so I wrote you a book and now you have to read it! Just kidding…this post is really just to break the silence with something a little happier than the last post.

i spent about a month, off and on, writing a blog entry that I’ve decided to trash today. the effort it was taking to edit it was in complete conflict with the point of the entry, so better to start fresh and post something from the heart without overthinking it.

the article was about coming to terms with the fact that both nature and nurture have programmed me to be a chronic overdoer, and lately I’m working on accepting that it’s just not good for me. Doing a lot of stuff makes me feel productive and useful and good, and it’s easy to get addicted to the high of accomplishing things that not just anyone could pull off. At the point where you’re channeling your neuroticism and affinity for overscheduling into that kind of eudamonistic happiness, you’re getting validation on so many levels that it’s easy to think you’re really onto something. I get it, and I get why other people do it. I’ve just decided that at least in my life, it’s a really masturbatory tactic. In all that time that i’m booking tasks and hobbies and other ‘productive’ pursuits, i’m not leaving time for life to happen, and leaving time for life to happen has become very important to me in the last few years.

It’s almost a fluke that my overdoing in college didn’t land me in the hospital (if not the morgue); it should’ve. it certainly landed me in a therapist’s chair…but only long enough for her to tell me that I was doing too much, long enough for me to decide she didn’t “get” it, long enough for me to decide that I didn’t have time to talk about my feelings anydamnway. I am not a stranger to fighting against the current, but I like to think I’m a pretty grateful person, and I knew when I escaped from duke with a diploma and a job that I had gotten very lucky.

I decided to attone for my sins and pay respect to this fantastic luck by taking a mental health vacation, by actively abstaining from anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary to my survival until I’d recovered (physically, emotionally) from my college experience. I figured after six months or so, i’d feel adequately bored with the routine to start ratcheting my level of activity back up to a sustainable level of the chaos I believed I needed to be happy. And then, voila, I’d be an adult with everything all figured out!

six months, ha. i was so cute.

i’ve known for a long time that i’m happiest when i put what i think i want out of my mind and instead look to the universe for what i should be doing or learning next. i’ve let myself down trying to stick square pegs into round holes, but even when my course seemed strange or unjustifiable at the beginning, the universe has never disappointed me.

It’s never stopped talking to me either, which I think is why I haven’t gotten bored and haven’t needed to add any structure to my life. I’ve just been doing so much living that I don’t have time for bullshit.

(I just realized with the title of this post, “living” might seem like a euphemism. That isn’t a Mary quote. I guess I can’t tell you who said that, but my mom [cough] could if you want to ask her.)

I know there are people with the exact opposite paradigm who could say the same thing. They don’t have time for nothing because they’re too busy driving to practices and lessons. To each his own, but I don’t see much point in being part of a team if you’re functioning independently, nor much point in learning French if you’re never going to make time to sit down and speak it with anyone.

I saw an interview with an overdoer on TV this weekend and realized that I spend more time in a day playing with Nixie than she spends playing with her daughter. I was really scared by the fact that, for how horrified I was by this woman’s priorities, I felt like I could really understand her rut.

I’m sure this will seem obvious to some people, but it was a huge concept for me and I think many people like me: just because you can do something doesn’t mean you have to. During my rowing years, i saw everything as really black and white, as I think you often have to to really excel at one particular thing. I thought of anyone who stopped rowing as a Quitter, and the only reason a person would quit was that he or she just couldn’t hang. I was so shocked when my roommate (who I respected deeply as an athlete as well as a person) told me that she was leaving the team. Who is this person? What was she going to do now? What do non-rowers even do with their extra six hours a day? Watch MTV? Eat cheetos? This is terrible!

But I hadn’t been wrong about her. She really was an incredible athlete, but that wasn’t all she was. She wanted to do other things with her life, and she started doing them. She was sleeping when I’d wake up at 5, she was eating avocado at her desk when I came home at 9, she was writing an article for the school paper when I left for the next practice at 4, she was on her way to dinner with friends when I came back at 8. I flew to Boston to race at the HOTC. She flew to Boston to go to Boston. She watched the races, visited with friends in town, did what she wanted on her own terms. Basically, her life got awesome.

A mix of unfortunate scheduling, academic, and interpersonal situations made it more and more clear that it was time for me to leave rowing behind too, but I never would have done it if it weren’t for her. I didn’t really know who I was if I wasn’t a rower. It turned out ok, though. Similarly, during my post-college planning, I didn’t know who I was outside of a producer, a doer, a planner. but I think that’s turning out ok too.

And that is why when I see reruns of I Want to Work for Diddy and I start to think hey, i could kick every one of their asses at that, I have to shake the craziness out of my head and remind myself that just because i (think i) could, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, and hunting for external validation is a waste of effort when what I really want for myself is the internal kind. I don’t need anybody to know my name and I hope not to abuse anyone because I don’t have time to devote appropriate thought to his/her situation. I just want to have a few great friends and my family and maybe someday a family of my own, and to be as good to those people as i can be.

The editing of the never-posted post was hard because in the middle of it, I took a trip home and realized that if I can’t keep my Durham calm in the Michigan storm, I will never be able to move home. When I surround myself with people who struggle with the same need to firefight and make things perfect, it’s easy for me to relapse, and I turn into someone I don’t like among people I love, and should work to actively love more. So that’s my focus now: portability. I’m glad I’ve found my Walden Pond in Durham, but one day I’d like to take some of that pond back to the land of 11,000 lakes.

man. can you believe that there was a day when i would run from east campus to my first practice of the day in Card Gym because if I ran fast enough, I could sleep for five to seven minutes longer than if I’d taken the bus? let’s say it together now: screw. that.

I am not editing this entry or I’ll never post it. I hope it doesn’t sound preachy, as that’s a large part of why I scrapped the last one.

And now, a memorly.com ^TM public service announcement! I go for my second Gardasil shot today. If you or someone you love is a good candiate for the vaccine, you really need to do that. If you don’t think you’re at risk, that means you have the most to gain from it, and if you think you’ll never be at risk, you should probably read some statistics on sexual assault. I’m not trying to be a downer, but in the last six months, i’ve heard of three friends-of-friends who are dying or dead from cervical cancer. All under 25. And if I can keep track of the appointments, there’s no excuse for you not to.

ok, Internet. thanks for listening, and get your shots.