“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.” ~ Mary Oliver

I find myself in a wonderful mood this morning, something that I know I need to grab onto with all of my strength. They don’t come often. I mean, I’m not usually in a BAD mood, but I have a steady mood. I don’t experience many highs and lows.

When I have a day like today, when I’m smiling for seemingly no reason, I always try to figure out why. What could I do to replicate this more frequently? The answer is usually that I slept well, that I had a good but not too hard workout, that I have a busy but not impossible day ahead of me… the usual things, in other words.

What gives me pause, though, is that external events also seem to influence my mood. I’m sure that mine, today, is bolstered by the Electoral College voting (finally) yesterday. I had been holding my breath until that day, and now that it is past, with minimal disruption, I feel as though I can exhale a little.

Which begs the question… does my good mood, does my joy, depend on external factors? Shouldn’t it all come from within?

Kind of to my surprise, my answer was, why shouldn’t external events influence my mood? I live in the world, I pay attention to what’s going on (for the most part), I am invested in it. Isn’t that part of what it means to be a person on this earth, in this society? I think the important thing is that I not let my mood, my day, my approach to life be completely derailed by external factors over which I have no control. Yes, they’re important, but they’re not everything.

So today – I’ll take my good mood to my (many, many meetings). I’ll work to maintain it throughout the day. And I’ll enjoy being surprised by the joy I feel bubbling up in me on this random mid-December day at the end of this pandemic year.

Life is such an interesting mix of change and stability, isn’t it? I was thinking about this this morning, as I contemplated the end of yet another semester. (Side note: how on earth do they go so fast? Every semester seems interminable at the beginning, then it’s like the days and weeks go into warp speed and before you know it, you’re entering final grades, again. Anyway…)

My life is such an interesting mix of change and stability. I suspect most peoples’ lives are like this, but it becomes even more evident for me at this time of year, when the end of the semester approaches. My life is built around the academic calendar, not the Gregorian calendar. To me, the year starts in mid-August, when faculty ramp up their prep for the start of a new semester, and the new students arrive on campus. There is an excitement in the air that I suspect most people feel in January – a feeling of new beginnings, anticipation of new relationships, learning new things, discovering new paths in life.

And every year I am blown away by just how much I learn and grow each semester. Every group of students – every conference and presentation – offers a treasure trove of new ideas to contemplate. Every class that I teach provides me with unparalleled opportunities to learn from my students. Experiences – even those I dread ahead of time – nearly always lead to at least one revelation. Although I will say that the one piece of my life that doesn’t lead to these revelations is the endless meetings… but I digress.

Yet there is so much stability to my life, too. Most of my job – the responsibilities, the projects, the studies – provides the solid foundation that I need to explore all the new ideas, new knowledge, new ways of thinking. Maybe the details change year-to-year, but the core remains unchanged.

One of the reasons I love this life so much is that it allows me to recapture how I felt growing up – I had the solid foundation of a supportive and loving family, a stable home. Yet I also had so many opportunities to grow, to learn, to change my way of thinking. That combination is so important to how we grow and develop as humans, and I know how lucky I was to have it in abundance.

So as the end of the semester approaches, I’m thankful, again, for the opportunity to have a life where my curiosity, my need for learning, are also supported by the stable foundation of the rest of my job and my life. It’s what keeps me going, what motivates me to bring my all to each class, each project or study or initiative. I’m off to teach my last class of the semester, where I will (once again) thank the students for teaching me so much. And I’ll start looking forward to what I will learn when things ramp up again in January. Change and stability…

Well, a new *virtual* home, anyway. If you’ve been here before (and thank you, if you have – I truly appreciate everyone who reads), then you’ve probably realized that I made the jump and switched from Blogger to WordPress. It’s been… a process. A learning process. And a humbling one. Nothing like making a change like this to help you realize just how much you don’t know.

But… I’m glad to be in a more customizable, more accessible virtual space. I never thought I’d get to this point with this blog – it was just a way to have conversations with myself, essentially, in a virtual space. An extension of my written journal, in a way. But then I started reading other blogs, and (eventually) leaving comments, and finding out just how valuable a virtual community can be, in addition to the community and network I am building where I live. I’ve found others who have similar interests, whose writing I love to read. And I wanted to be a more, well, semi-permanent part of that virtual community.

I know I’ll never have thousands of followers. That’s not my goal. But I do appreciate the opportunity to share some of the random thoughts in my head, to know that somewhere, out there (ha, old 80s movie reference…), there are others who have similar thoughts, who may find their way here, too. I look forward to building and growing my little community, and feel like this is the first, well, grown-up step to doing that.

So thanks again for reading and being here. It means a lot.

It’s only been a couple of weeks since I wrote a post on how my superpower is self-doubt. 

I received several lovely comments on that post, with others saying they struggle with the same thing. Stephany‘s comment, in particular, stood out to me. What if, instead, I asked myself what would happen if something actually went well? 

A few days later, I got the weekly edition of an email newsletter to which I have subscribed for years, written by a life coach. It opened with this quote: 

So, yeah. I wrote that post title on Sunday. 

Just goes to show how accurately I predicted my week. As in, I was completely and totally wrong. The depths – of work, of worrying about our country and its future, of worrying about other “life things” – are still very much pulling me in, despite my best efforts to extract myself. 

When I wrote that title, I was focusing mostly on work. I thought I was past the nuttiest time of the semester, as I had finished the vast majority of my guest lectures, wrapped up one course, and only had one remaining. And then I realized just how much there still is for that one course. Not to mention my service on multiple committees and groups. So yeah, not quite done yet. 

I am thrilled with the outcome of the presidential election (might as well just put it out there). The last four years have been interminable for those of us who could not believe that a completely unqualified toddler with no experience, or even interest, in serving the country could be elected president over such a vastly better qualified and competent candidate. And yet. Here we are. Sunday, I was feeling pretty good. Today? I’m not so sure. I left a comment on Susanne’s blog that commended her for stepping away from news and social media… for I find myself doom scrolling and seeking any glimmers of hope that T*****’s attempts to steal a lawful election from the voters will fail. I know this is bad – for my mental health and for getting all that other stuff I referred to up there ^^^. I’m working on it. But it is hard. I want to believe this will all come out right in the end, but I could have done without the prolonged anxiety. Taking another deep breath this morning, willing myself to put down my phone, and focus on what I CAN do. Obsessing about Michigan a, won’t change anything, and b, just makes me anxious. 

I found this quote from John Steinbeck in an email from … last week? I think? From James Clear. His 3-2-1 newsletter is one of the best out there, if you are looking for a weekly dose of insight. It helps… to remember we have come to this point before and emerged unscathed. I have to have hope that will happen again. 

Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man.