"All this living's so much harder than it seems// you know, this livin's not so hard as it seems"

So I've had kind of a strange couple of weeks. I was rather low for awhile and this was compunded by my feeling foolish for feeling low and it took me a while to, first, give myself permission to not be happy and, second, to investigate why I wasn't happy.

This is a phase that I go through regularly; I want to say once or twice a year. I have to re-realize that being unhappy does not make me a failure, but it is probably telling me something important about myself. It trips me up and makes me realize I've been crawling. I have been thinking about this article (Depression's Evolutionary Roots, in Scientific American), which discusses depression as an evolutionary necessity, as the mental analogy to a physical fever-- an automatic response that helps to eradicate another problem.

Other than dealing with my emotions, as always, I've started seriously looking into education as a career. I'm looking into Iowa state certification, Chinese language teacher training, and Waldorf and Montessori certification. My ego will be a bit upset with me if I don't decide to pursue higher education in Science and become part of my generation's Badass Female Scientist League, but I think I might be happier as an educator. I see many of our problems today rooted in the fact that students don't learn to investigate truth on their own in school; they learn to mimic those 'smarter' (probably really only more educated) than themselves, so that after school all important issues easily become a competition between sides who have already decided what they think. (There will be more on education later, I hope, as I have yet to understand to my satisfaction the difference between the Waldorf and Montessori philosophies.)

Basically, after a couple of weeks of mental bewilderment, I have come to the conclusion that what I need to decide what direction to move in my life is a systematic exploration of topics I am interested in... like, maybe, a weekly blog series! I am too clever for myself, sometimes.


Title is from Jack Johnson's "Dreams be Dreams."