The person isn't on my friend's list, so you probably assumed correctly. :)
I wish I could grab my own advice and go back in time with it. Not only could the stress with the health problems determine how long I stayed in school, it probably affect my entire physical health from then on out.
Now, the blood clot I had that one year, I couldn't do much about. I'm sure the rest of my health problems would have caught up with me eventually. Still, I really wished I could have taken my successes in stride. I never got to enjoy them.
The more I succeeded, the shorter my happiness seemed to last -- because I I would immediately fear not being able to even compete with my own work, much less any new challenges. Add to that my own dilemmas over my esteem, what I knew my identity to be was changing, dealing with deadlines and other students and activities... whoa. Getting older and *being* older than most of the other students, too, was nerve-wracking. I thought every time I failed it reflected back on me, "you're past your prime" nightmares most 30-ish people can feel.
It all looks so easy when someone else does it. :P That's what pisses me off. I couldn't even make it *look* easy! ;) At least, I don't think I did, anyway.
{{{Big hugs}}}. There is no beauty that has no strangeness in proportion. Flaws are true beauty, /end Dove Beauty Campaign. :) Besides those fluffy moments, I think all of fears over success and failure are almost always rooted in something deeper in the individual. Perhaps once we each can find how each come about, the measures of successes and failures are unveiled simply as life experiences -- nothing more, and nothing less. It's our own emotions and reactions that determine their fate.
I actually wrote a version of this last night -- it was harder for me to write about it than I thought it would be. It did place some things in perspective. :) Maybe you have written about it, referenced the truth of the matter, and just haven't come full circle yet.
I'm sorry you go through this. {{hugs again}} I know it's a bitch sometimes (most of the time).The biggest success I think that one can ever achieve is inner faith, respect, and love for the person inside each of us. After that, instead of interfering in the quality with which we feel about ourselves, success and/or failure can happen to any man without scaring him half to death. :)
Yeah, everyone else makes success look so easy, and I feel like I'm always sitting there, flailing around and just generally stressing. And then I try to do too much more to make up for my incompetence, and...yeah. Very short-lived happiness. Even my professors tell me to take a break and sleep. But I'm so LAZY by nature that I'm afraid if I slow down, I'll just stop altogether! And then I have the one professor who pushes me harder than I push myself, which is an incredibly hard thing to do. :-P Well, correction. He pushes me harder in some areas. He doesn't actually think I should ever take 7 classes at once--nobody does. :-P
But I don't really have health problems (besides the ones I inflict on myself from the stress and not sleeping :-P). I have things like poor eyesight and hearing that can affect the learning process, but I've learned to overcome those ages ago. I don't know how you did it with all of your health problems!
Actually, what I've always admired about you is that you seem to have a lot more focus than I'll ever have. I'm just too easily distracted. ::sigh::
Wow: I totally relate on being fearful about becoming too lazy. :) I tried to stay up for three days straight over the stupid website, for fear I would become too lazy to finish it. Of course, I'll emotionally and physically crash & burn if I DON'T take breaks. I know, too, if I become bored with a tedious project, it would take a moose on steroids to shove me into finishing it. I often just plunge right in and spend days doing a project until it's all over, then I burn out like a flash hitting the pan. I had a really good professor who seemed to know how to direct my energy. I wish I could hire him full-time. It's hard because I usually misjudge where I am truly not being lazy, and when I *am* just being lazy. :}
Seven classes -- holy crap, dear! I took seven courses once, and it liked to kill me. I finally had to nix a few. I hated to take less than six courses, since the way tuition ran one to six courses cost the same. In the end, I just had to live with taking no more than four courses at a time. It really depended, though, on the difficulty of the courses. When I do math and science, I might take no more than three, since I need more time to study to hold onto a higher GPA. :P
Wow, I appreciate the compliments; but what's funny is that hell, I feel like I am the least focused person I know, LOL! I'm constantly doing 20+ things at once. Even right now, I'm drawing patterns for Ren Fest and studying web design as I type this out. It's a complete *bitch* living this way sometimes, because after the rush hour is over, all I can do afterward is try to recuperate. Poor Ronnie often has to pick up after me. I think the only thing that keeps me sane is my spiritual work and my religious studies. I attend to those with strict discipline, and that's *very* hard to do that sometimes. It keeps me grounded, and makes me take a break from the projects I have going. Otherwise, I would burn myself completely out.
It's not so much focus on my part than it's,"Okay, get this crap done, so you can go do the other crap." ;) Maybe that's why I don't feel "focused". I guess that it could be a type of focus! :D But it's not always exactly positive, since I'm really too busy focusing on what's ahead rather than what I am supposed to be doing. I get distracted when I feel I can't work fast enough. It makes me feel inadequate; so I try to work faster, either finishing or tripping over my own two feet, and it keeps going in a circle until I either finish the damn thing, or walk away from it. That's really the reason why I'm so late with putting yup all these goddamn websites. :)
With the chronic illnesses, they're just a part of my existence and instead of fighting them, I just learned to compensate the best I can. I still don't know myself how I finished my best semester when I was taking far too many pain relievers & seizure medications. Hell, I don't *remember* that semester, except for the papers I wrote & the grade lists I received at the end of it. LOL!
I wish I could grab my own advice and go back in time with it.
Not only could the stress with the health problems determine how long I stayed in school, it probably affect my entire physical health from then on out.
Now, the blood clot I had that one year, I couldn't do much about. I'm sure the rest of my health problems would have caught up with me eventually. Still, I really wished I could have taken my successes in stride. I never got to enjoy them.
The more I succeeded, the shorter my happiness seemed to last -- because I I would immediately fear not being able to even compete with my own work, much less any new challenges. Add to that my own dilemmas over my esteem, what I knew my identity to be was changing, dealing with deadlines and other students and activities... whoa. Getting older and *being* older than most of the other students, too, was nerve-wracking. I thought every time I failed it reflected back on me, "you're past your prime" nightmares most 30-ish people can feel.
It all looks so easy when someone else does it. :P That's what pisses me off. I couldn't even make it *look* easy! ;) At least, I don't think I did, anyway.
{{{Big hugs}}}. There is no beauty that has no strangeness in proportion. Flaws are true beauty, /end Dove Beauty Campaign. :) Besides those fluffy moments, I think all of fears over success and failure are almost always rooted in something deeper in the individual. Perhaps once we each can find how each come about, the measures of successes and failures are unveiled simply as life experiences -- nothing more, and nothing less. It's our own emotions and reactions that determine their fate.
I actually wrote a version of this last night -- it was harder for me to write about it than I thought it would be. It did place some things in perspective. :) Maybe you have written about it, referenced the truth of the matter, and just haven't come full circle yet.
I'm sorry you go through this. {{hugs again}} I know it's a bitch sometimes (most of the time).The biggest success I think that one can ever achieve is inner faith, respect, and love for the person inside each of us. After that, instead of interfering in the quality with which we feel about ourselves, success and/or failure can happen to any man without scaring him half to death. :)
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Yeah, everyone else makes success look so easy, and I feel like I'm always sitting there, flailing around and just generally stressing. And then I try to do too much more to make up for my incompetence, and...yeah. Very short-lived happiness. Even my professors tell me to take a break and sleep. But I'm so LAZY by nature that I'm afraid if I slow down, I'll just stop altogether! And then I have the one professor who pushes me harder than I push myself, which is an incredibly hard thing to do. :-P Well, correction. He pushes me harder in some areas. He doesn't actually think I should ever take 7 classes at once--nobody does. :-P
But I don't really have health problems (besides the ones I inflict on myself from the stress and not sleeping :-P). I have things like poor eyesight and hearing that can affect the learning process, but I've learned to overcome those ages ago. I don't know how you did it with all of your health problems!
Actually, what I've always admired about you is that you seem to have a lot more focus than I'll ever have. I'm just too easily distracted. ::sigh::
Reply
Seven classes -- holy crap, dear! I took seven courses once, and it liked to kill me. I finally had to nix a few. I hated to take less than six courses, since the way tuition ran one to six courses cost the same. In the end, I just had to live with taking no more than four courses at a time. It really depended, though, on the difficulty of the courses. When I do math and science, I might take no more than three, since I need more time to study to hold onto a higher GPA. :P
Wow, I appreciate the compliments; but what's funny is that hell, I feel like I am the least focused person I know, LOL! I'm constantly doing 20+ things at once. Even right now, I'm drawing patterns for Ren Fest and studying web design as I type this out. It's a complete *bitch* living this way sometimes, because after the rush hour is over, all I can do afterward is try to recuperate. Poor Ronnie often has to pick up after me. I think the only thing that keeps me sane is my spiritual work and my religious studies. I attend to those with strict discipline, and that's *very* hard to do that sometimes. It keeps me grounded, and makes me take a break from the projects I have going. Otherwise, I would burn myself completely out.
It's not so much focus on my part than it's,"Okay, get this crap done, so you can go do the other crap." ;) Maybe that's why I don't feel "focused". I guess that it could be a type of focus! :D But it's not always exactly positive, since I'm really too busy focusing on what's ahead rather than what I am supposed to be doing. I get distracted when I feel I can't work fast enough. It makes me feel inadequate; so I try to work faster, either finishing or tripping over my own two feet, and it keeps going in a circle until I either finish the damn thing, or walk away from it. That's really the reason why I'm so late with putting yup all these goddamn websites. :)
With the chronic illnesses, they're just a part of my existence and instead of fighting them, I just learned to compensate the best I can. I still don't know myself how I finished my best semester when I was taking far too many pain relievers & seizure medications. Hell, I don't *remember* that semester, except for the papers I wrote & the grade lists I received at the end of it. LOL!
Reply
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