what am i going to do with my life?

Have I mentioned that I'm sick? Sinus infection, of course. I'm not even gonna waste the energy it would take to gripe about it. I'm on antibiotics, which upset my stomach, wear me out completely, but wire me so that I can't sleep. So, instead of lying awake in bed and getting frustrated over inability to sleep, here I am, blogging. Woo.

These are some thoughts from an email I wrote to a friend once-upon-a-time. I happened to run across them where I'd saved them in my journal, so I thought I'd share them here.

Don't call yourself pathetic. I don't think it's pathetic not to know what you want to do. As I get older, I start to think more and more that this isn't a pathetic condition--it's a normal one. And while we're on the subject of choosing life's direction: Where is it written that when we are choosing the direction our lives should go, this direction necessarily has to have anything to do with a *job*? I think that when we think about the future, jobs and careers should be secondary. Your job does not define who you are. Robert Byrne said, "People's hobbies are more their measure than are their jobs." So even hobbies define you more than a job does!

So if jobs and careers are secondary in self-definition, what's primary? Who you are. Who you want to be. Where you want to be eternally. You can have the best job in the world and the most successful career in history, but it won't have one whit of influence on where you spend eternity. Who you are, however, the real you on the inside, will determine entirely where you spend eternity. So when choosing a direction for your life, the focus should be on where you want to spend eternity and what you have to do to get there.

I'm telling myself all this, too, just kind of thinking out loud. I believe what I'm saying, yet I still feel vulnerable when I think about my uncertain future. I think you're right about focusing on God and giving yourself time to figure yourself out. I know I need to do the same thing, especially where God is concerned. It's amazing how you can be working full-time with the church and yet neglect your own spiritual life at the same time. And neglect God at the same time. I don't pray enough.....I have to admit that it's rare that I sit down or kneel and just pray for half an hour. I'm very good at "arrow prayers"--thinking of God at random times during the day and just having a "little talk" with Him. But I hardly ever just sit and talk to Him for a long time and bare my heart to Him.

...My life would improve radically if I tried harder to focus on Him.