"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." Bruce Lee
Things have been going really well here! School has been a challenge but once I got a rhythm down everything started falling into place. At one point around week 7 I started to feel as if I was drowning. I started going under and the self doubt started to fester. I had a mini breakdown. Then my bestie send me a bouquet of flowers, wrote me a motivational note and said to get on with it. That was the point I started to swim harder. Eventually, about two weeks later I started actually doing laps and was no longer treading water. At that point I noticed a drop off of fellow classmates. I then realized that everyone else felt like I did at that point, yet I didn't give up. I imbued myself with more determination than ever.
I am handing in assignments at a fast pace now. I am usually the first one to do so and days earlier then they are required to be turned in. I was assigned a four page paper on Friday that I knocked out while lifting the following morning. Granted it was a topic I am passionate about (current agricultural practices, food, and biotech) and I enjoy writing. Just this factor alone helps with school. I have come to realize I do my best writing in the morning because I am zippy and thinking fast. As for the evening I do best with my reading because I'm moving slower and my brain can focus more. In the morning I am just too all over the place to try and focus on reading. So in learning these things about myself and applying them in the best manner has been extremely beneficial.
Also being this age and in school I have a better concept of time than I did in my twenties. Time is much more valuable to me currently then ever before in my life. I get straight up grouchy when I feel like my time was wasted. So managing time is a huge proponent to being successful with online classes. Next semester though I will be traveling to class two times a week for chemistry. Chemistry is one I'm super excited for. I also get to take a nutrition class this semester so that'll help keep me engaged. It's hard if you have classes that you need but are just doing the busywork and motions to get through it. I had a hard time at first with having Environmental Ethics and Philosophy together but once Enviro Ethics started really getting past the terminology and into the nitty gritty of our current depressing state of things I've been really able to delve into the material.
I'm actually reading ahead of the schedule because I enjoy the subject matter so much. I think I'll end up with three A's and one B which will come from Philosophy which I'm fine with. Seriously, this class is a hard one for an online format. Philosophy needs to be discussed, over and over, to help grasp the theories. My end of semester paper for Philosophy is ten pages long and the question is " Is democratic government necessary to achieve an ideal society?" I'll need at least a page of definitions for each of the following: democracy, government, and an ideal society. I'll then have to put forth my argument, an objection and a conclusion, all done within the philosophical method. I started working on it a few weeks ago but really need to start gaining some headway or I'll have another mini breakdown come the first of December.
I am proud that I am taking on this sort of challenge. Life is harder when you have other people that depend and count on you. As for when you are in your twenties and going to school one is usually a selfish, self centered, little shit that has all the time in the world. I love learning and always have, I just never had people rooting for me my whole life. I never had anyone pushing me to succeed. I've always had to find the gumption to take matters into my own hands. I suppose this is why I had so many years of turbulence but now that the course has righted itself I feel even more confident and hungry for my next chapter.
I also have made it a point to put aside fifteen minutes a day for self reflection, essentially, putting myself into a meditative state. This has proved to be a very crucial component with me not being a huge stress ball. I have stopped listening to music while lifting and have feathered in more studying and schoolwork while lifting. So in a sense that was kind of my previous release time and I let school infiltrate that time in which I needed to find another decompression outlet. These 15 minutes of breathing and centering have succeeded at filling this niche.
There are definitely more things on my plate, more extracurricular activities where I'm shuttling the kids, to and fro, yet there isn't the stress of caring for Nana anymore. After she passed there was this moment when I was actually able to step back and take a breath and say that shit was intense. That is the best way to describe it, intense. I didn't realize that I had put my head down and was just going though the motions to make it through a day. Here I found myself popping up to the surface and starting to swim again.
It's never too late. It's never too late to continue to better yourself. Why stop?
"I thought, how many new lives can we have? Then I thought, as many as we like." Judi Dench
