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Photo credit and gratitude to, Dave Re photography...

The Piece of Paper ~vs~ The Process

 Coming in from the green (the big green waters behind me) passing a local Balinese surfer who is in the background "of my life" smiling and cheering me on...even when I didn't know it. One of the most memorable captions of my life and a true metaphor.

Since starting school I have been so busy and could not have planned for the amount of time required outside of class to be successful. I'm grateful for caring professors who are teaching me very valuable life lessons, friends and family who have supported me and Jeff who has taken on the not so easy task of being my personal tutor working just as many algebraic equations with me while being the voice or reason and encouragement that always seems to sit on my shoulder when I need a gentle reminder of why I'm doing this in the first place.


I do miss my personal writing time however. Spring break is around the corner and I intend to sit down with things and create space for more creative self-care incorporating more time for those things that sustain me. Writing is one of them for sure, as is nature and travel...which I will be doing some of immediately following the semester's end. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with my energy source that is the ocean via the white sand beaches of Florida then (hyper link is acting up! Click over here ---->) on retreat at Maya Tulum a few weeks later. Until then, there's a lot to get done!


Last Sunday I found myself sitting at the table staring at what should have been a word document filled with my personal analysis on an essay I had read. I sat there rubbing my head, holding my face and questioning what I was doing. 


"Why am I even doing this?"


Across from me sat a brilliant and patient man who I have so much admiration and respect for who would later say something that would change my entire view of this project I've taken on.


He told me a college education is not about getting the piece of paper in the end. 


"A college education is about who you become through the process. That is your college education." 


When I think about the process that got me here, the years of confidence I didn't have in this area, I'm reminded of the truth to these words. That said, there's a level of confidence being developed that I had been unable to relate to until now. There's the academic learning, sure. There is also the testing of my spirit to go beyond what I sometimes question as possible, reasonable, maintainable and one of the hardest things I've ever done...and it's only just begun. Such is life. I'm writing about college here, but any experience that seems foreign or out of reach or ridiculous could be filled in the blank.

I'm a smart woman. I've had to be to both survive and succeed in the life I have been born into. While I realize many others have had it far worse than I could have ever imagined, I've made it no secret that it wasn't always easy for me. I had to teach myself to become a woman and how to relate with the world and all to often, unsuccessfully so. I've had to be my own encourager and cheerleader and the one to pick myself up when I've fallen. What I've learned is that I'm not alone. There are people around me who love me who are cheering me on sometimes quietly; sometimes quite loudly. Through all of this, I crossed an abyss in my life (when I arrived into 30s for starters) and began to change the way I saw the world and the way I saw myself. 

I still have not finished paper 4; the Interpretive Analysis, but it will be done today. I am a woman of integrity and will fulfill this personal goal I set out to take on. I know now that it's not about the time it takes me to complete this process. The growth and fulfillment will be in my returning to this commitment each day. And as I return to the commitment I will continue to develop a belief in myself, in my potential which will prove to break free from the labels I've defined myself in the world by or have been defined by, and in the possibilities of what it looks like to live a life fully explored; played full out.


As he said... 
"This is the 'bold and brave' part."