Yesterday, I went to the seminary and turned in the last of my final exams. I now find myself on the other end of my first year, hoping against hope that I passed all my classes. I’d say this has been a challenging year, but that sounds too sanitized. I feel as though I’ve been completely broken down. I, along with all my assumptions about myself, my abilities, my conception of God, have been through the wringer. I keep trying to reassure myself that I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t experiencing this calling, and if this is where I’m supposed to be, everything will work itself out somehow.

This has been a challenging year for a number of reasons. First, This is the first time in 7 years that I’ve been on the other side of the classroom, and the first time in over a decade that I’ve taken courses not related to mathematics or computer science. My analytical brain has been rebelling at the subjective way that grades are done. I often felt I was trying to meet requirements and expectations without knowing exactly what they are.

Second, theology cannot be done without putting one’s heart, soul, and very life into it. I’ve cried more in the last 10 months than I have in a very long time. I found myself having to make peace with a lot of crap in my past. I grew up gay and Catholic in conservative suburbia, and often felt like I had no one I could talk to, except for God. I lost my best friend to suicide. I’ve spent the vast majority of my adult life unemployed or very underemployed. I’ve struggled with low self-esteem and depression. I have harbored feelings of resentment and failure about all this. I had to make my peace with all this, and I feel as though I’ve started to do so.

Third, these feelings of failure, and this transition from being in an analytic discipline, has meant that I’ve gone from not having to try to be an exceptional student, to having to work my ass off at being an acceptable one. My ego has been thoroughly deflated, and my pride slightly bruised. Trying to maintain my self-esteem through all this, which has at times been quite fragile, would probably be impossible without the love and support of my husband and friends.

Such things no doubt build character, and I will be a stronger person and better minister for this experience.

I just hope I passed History, and New Testament.

(I’m trying out the blog app for Android.)

Last week, after a long heart-to-heart with my wonderful husband, I’ve decided (by which I mean, Dino decided, and I agree) to go on for a doctorate immediately after finishing the M.Div. I have to do it, for a lot of reasons I’m not going to go into right now.

That said, I am 33 years old. God-willing, I’ll finish my masters in 2 more years, at 35. I’ll be 36 when I start course work on the doctorate. If I’m lucky, I’ll be done when I’m 40, but I probably won’t be that lucky. So there’s another decade of my life in academia.

It will open me to more options professionally, and means we’ll be more likely to be able to stay in the city we love. I just need to make my peace with the amount of commitment, and debt, this will entail.

I’m not one to shy away from a challenge. The next 10 years will be interesting.

School, work, and life in general, are going well. Life without Facebook is awesome, and I no longer feel like I’m constantly rushing to get everything done.

Winter is doing what winter does in February, and that is making both me and Dino grumpypants. We’ve reached the point where we’re getting full-spectrum light bulbs, because we’re tired of being tired and moody all the damn time. I find that when I’m out and about doing stuff, it’s not so bad, but who has time to go out and do stuff when they’re in grad school? Also, in this weather, who really wants to?

Lately, I’ve been falling into hyper-self-critical mode. I’ve been trying to get out of that, and to modify some of the behaviors that have fed into that sort of thinking. It’s a struggle, but one that I feel I’m winning by virtue of getting through another day.

Spring will be here soon enough, and then I can get back to sitting in the quad and reading.

PS. (For my fellow nerds.) After a catastrophic computer failure (one year after the warranty expired), I am on a Dell Latitude running (for the first time in years) Windows 7, and not (completely) hating it. Will probably be switching back to Ubuntu in the near-ish future, but for now, I’m giving it the old college try.

For the first time since Christmas, I slept well and woke up in a remarkably good mood. I think it is partly because I quit Facebook yesterday. I won’t go into the reasons, apart from that it had become a compulsion, I am much happier for being free of it. For those of you who will miss me on Facebook, you can e-mail, or call, or connect with me through any of those other means of communication that people used before Facebook.

I also de-cluttered my computer, re-installed Ubuntu (trying 12.10 now), sorted and culled my electronic documents, and installed only what I need for work and school. Incidentally, the Ubuntu backup utility works beautifully.

January Intercession is almost over. The Introduction to Biblical Languages class wasn’t quite what I expected, but I had fun taking it, and I got a lot of useful information about online resources. I am satisfied with my grades thus far, and I am looking forward to next semester.

I’m slowly moving forward with the ordination process. I got the support of the ordination committee at Judson; now I need to revise my paper for the Metropolitan Association.

There’s not really anything to rant about. I’m not even angry anymore about that one class I had to take last semester. Maybe I should change the name of this blog.

When I agreed to be Treasurer of my church, I was thinking it would be a good experience to learn more about the logistics of churches. Since I was planning on starting seminary in hopes of becoming a church pastor, I thought it would be a good thing to put on my CV. Most importantly, I thought it would be a good opportunity to use some of my gifts to serve the church community I love.

I knew seminary would be demanding. I knew being Treasurer would  be work. I did not take into account that there would be problems with the methods we were using. No one expected our file server to fail. I didn’t anticipate having required courses interfere with board meeting times, or the amount of stress created by trying to make a broken bookkeeping system meet our needs.

When I applied to seminaries, I knew it would mean a lot of work, more debt, and less time for paid work, and less quality time with my husband. I knew that school, along with work and church, would be a lot. I know I have a tendency to over-extend myself, to have very high expectations of myself, and to, consequently, disappoint myself when I fail to meet those expectations.

Today I was in a good mood, and all set to write my paper for my church’s ordination committee. Then I got an e-mail that really upset me. It shouldn’t have upset me as much as it did, but it managed to derail me from starting my paper. Instead, I took a step back, took a deep breath, and took a moment to remind myself why I’m doing all this.

Reminding myself of that reason (which I won’t go into here), and reminding myself that it’s not about me, helped me figure out my priorities. Now if only I can figure out this whole self-care thing so I don’t get upset by e-mails that shouldn’t upset me.

Last night something happened that caused me to lose my cool. I’m normally very mild-mannered, but there are times when, under extreme stress, I forget myself.

Dino has been gone this week. Last Thursday he left for Ecuador, and he returns tonight. I thought it would be fun to cook for myself, try out different things, and post pictures of the results to Instagram, Facebook, and Google+. At first, it was fun. Yesterday, someone whom I don’t know, saw one of my pictures and said my food looks like vomit. I, being ever so eloquent and level-headed, told her to fuck off. It was not my proudest moment. She replied with equal vitriol. I deleted and reported her posts. Someone else, probably the same person with a fake account, posted a similar message, again using the vomit metaphor. I deleted and reported again, this time also deleting the image.

It may seem like a silly exchange, but I was hurt. Not so much by the action of this person or persons, although their actions were hurtful, but more by the fact that there are people who feel compelled to do that sort of thing to someone they don’t know. Add to that the stress of not having my husband here, and work stress, it’s enough to make even the most ardent humanist become a bit misanthropic.

Anonymity on the Internet has done to communication what long-range weapons have done to war. We can now bully people, or kill people, without ever having to see their face or know anything about them. In front of a computer, even with the picture of a face on a profile, the targets are dehumanized, reduced to the object of some childish sadism.

The Internet has permanently changed communication, in some ways for the better. When I was a lonely vegan living in the suburban Midwest, it helped me connect with other vegans and get the information I needed. It was through the internet that I met my husband of 6 years and counting. It was the Internet that has allowed me to reconnect with old friends and find many new friends. Without access to the Internet, I wouldn’t have learned about the United Church of Christ, the church I currently call home. The Internet has made vast libraries of information available to virtually anyone, anywhere.

A harsh comment on a photo may seem like a silly thing in the grand scheme of things, but it’s indicative of a larger problem. Why did someone feel compelled to post that? Why do people cyber-bully or troll others, in some cases harassing them to the point of driving them to suicide? Why do people engage in seemingly random acts of violence? In less than a month, there have been incidents of public shootings: July 20, in Aurora, CO; August 5, Oak Creek, WI; August 13, College Station, TX. Mental health is always a problem that needs to be dealt with humanely, in hospitals, not prisons. I can’t help but wonder how many of these tragic events could have been avoided if people had access to the healthcare, both mental and physical, that they needed.

There is a real need to make sure people unplug from the Internet, and interact with other people directly. Without that interaction, it is easy to forget that the other person we’re interacting with is a person. Without that interaction, it’s difficult to pick up on the warning signs of when a person is in trouble. Spending all day in front of a computer screen, even on a platform like Facebook or Google+ can leave someone feeling profoundly alone. Loneliness takes its tool on people’s emotional health and ability to interact with other people.

This blog entry has been long and rambling, but I’ll just leave you with this TL/DR: When your interactions on the Internet start to hurt you, it’s time to disconnect yourself from it, and get out in the real world.