Into The Rabbit Hole

Last week was pretty grueling!  I took a four day weekend for President’s Day, so that I could get completely prepared for my Organic Chem exam this week.  O Chem is going to be fairly challenging this semester,  so I’m VERY relieved to have only taken the O Chem lecture and lab and to be doing research. Thank GODDESS for having the wherewithal last December when I signed up for classes this semester to have not loaded up on schoolwork again– last semester was sufficiently crazy-making.  I’m pretty sure I learned my lesson.

A four day weekend should have been plenty of time to get ‘er all knocked out and compartmentalized in this here brain, but we had the kids, too… and they were sick all weekend.  Grrr.  This meant that while I *did* take the time to study, it was interrupted at times, and I still had other things to do… like laundry and help blow boogery noses and stuff.   Is it worth it?  Absolutely.  I love having booger noses in my life.  They say cute things and it’s neat to watch them learn and grow.

O Chem exams are interesting.  They’re too long to take in one class period, so the instructor is breaking every exam into two periods.  Which means an entire week (okay, a Tuesday and a Thursday) of brain draining gruel instead of just one day.  Weeeeeee.   It’s okay, though.  It means that whatever he didn’t put on the Tuesday test, he’s going to put on the Thursday test.  Frankly, I was surprised at how easy the test was.  I knew what the hell was going on– a GREAT sign considering that last semester there were a couple of times I sat down to take his tests and looked at the first page and was like, “Daaarrrr.”  What the eff?  Had he even talked about this stuff?

The good news is that I got a B.  A nice, solid, hard core B.  And I didn’t feel like I had done everything I could to prepare for the exam.  Now I know better about how I’m going to treat this semester– and that means spending copious time working on the examples he gives us… reading the text book (I know, what?!), and becoming a professional molecule maker.  Yes… indeedy.

I’m through the first exam of the semester, and I can tell you that overall, everything in my life is going very well.  My home is beautiful and warm and filled with harmony and joy.  I love my job IMMENSELY.  I have enough to eat, enough money to handle the bills, and enough of really everything I need.  In speaking of money, and all things, ultimately, I’m learning to halt my worry process before it starts flying out of control.  I’m a great worrier.  I have tendencies to worry about EVERYTHING.   Which makes for a pretty neurotic life.   In the last few years, though, in my ups and downs, I’ve realized (had an Aha! moment, rather) that worrying doesn’t fix anything.  It doesn’t make any of the worrisome things go away, and it certainly doesn’t solve the problems.  This being said, I’ve decided to stop worrying.  Life is too short to worry, and shit is going to happen whether I worry or not.  I’m living a solid life.  I am honest, and hard working, and kind.  Everything that I can control, I do.  Everything that is simply outside of my control will take care of itself on one level or another.

This may sound an awful lot like just being a casual observer of this experience.  It’s not.  With the energy I’m not using on worrying, I’m thinking about what I DO want.  I’m amazed, too, just how much energy is freed up by not worrying.

Our minds are a lot like computers in this sense.  We only have so much capacity to think about things… we can give things varying levels of focus– for instance, while driving, the road and what the other vehicles around you are doing is where all your CPU energy should be going.  If you add worrying into your equation, your list of active processes, you are only taking away more energy from the things that truly deserve your energy… like the things you WANT rather than what you don’t want.

In saying this, it’s is important to recognize that you can’t completely ignore the things that you don’t want… because ignorance doesn’t make a problem go away.  Not worrying about my O Chem test doesn’t mean that I can get away with not thinking about studying the material, only focusing on wanting to ace the class, and then not do anything about it (and then, of course,  not act surprised when I don’t do well on the exam).  Not worrying isn’t the same as being lackadaisical.  Not worrying does not equate not acting.  We DO have the responsibility of handling the problems.  But we have a whole lot better result when we think clearly, unemotionally, not worried about something.  Worry implies on many levels that you fear for the outcome.  This is the difference.

So, yes, life is going well.  I’m continuing to learn about myself, and I do so every day.  I know that NOW is yet another time for me to be the student from this experience, which is good, because I want to learn everything I can.  This life is very short, and I’ve discovered I know relatively nothing.  Life has a way of cycling like this… student then teacher, then student then teacher.  It’s a wheel.  Now I learn, and then later I spew it all forth for you all to read and then maybe learn some, too.  *wink*

At some point, I do want to talk with you all about this book I’ve been reading, but I think I’m going to have to save that for another post.  There’s SO much to this book, and I don’t know that I want to deviate that far off track from the point of this post.  Anyway, the book I’m reading for leisure (yay for reading for leisure!) is teaching me all kinds of stuff about our ancient religions and the Goddess and… sheesh, I better not get into it now.

There’s your update.  Sorry I haven’t posted much this week… but by now I’m sure you all understand why!