Beginning

I’m starting to have a panic attack about this semester. Don’t ask why. There is no logical reason for me to feel so overwhelmed with it, but I started looking through our syllabus online and started to panic. I just got through the semester from hell, and I’m worried about this? I don’t get it.

I took med dose calc on Friday, and passed. I have never felt quite that anxious about med dose calc. Adult health has taken away every ounce of confidence I ever had in myself. Not really, but it has definitely shaken that confidence a lot. I drove up to the school to take the test, and had already been second-guessing myself before I left. I started to turn into the parking garage and almost turned around to come home because I was so sure I wouldn’t pass the test! But I made myself go in there and do it anyway because I really didn’t want to have to worry about studying for it this weekend.

I was thinking tonight, how easily we give up on ourselves in life. Or, rather, how easily I give up on myself. I took one of those dumb surveys about 2008 on myspace (ok, I’m really lame) and one question was what was the best decision I made this past year? And when I thought about it, it came down to me not giving up on myself in October. What would the ramifications have been had I given up? I would have failed for sure. I wouldn’t be going back on Monday to join my class. It really hit me that my first instinct was to give up, and it was only at the urging of my mom that I even was able to pick myself up and keep going. I could have rolled up in a ball under the covers for the rest of the semester and been completely happy doing that- because that’s how I tend to deal with life when it comes at me from all directions. I throw the towel in too easily.

So, it is a new year. I decided that this year I’m not making resolutions. Do I have goals? For sure, but none of them are triggered by the fact that it is a new year- they are just things such as graduating college, passing the NCLEX, etc… goals that come with the next phase I’m about to go through. But being a new year, I do have to say I love new beginnings (now change, I’m not so sure about…). It’s like the feeling of waking up in the morning after you had a really crappy day, and you know that you get a fresh start. I can look at things from a different perspective, because it’s not 2008 anymore. I can close the book on that one. That hard year is over, and a new one has begun. I pray that this one will be better. Bela and I were talking the other day, and both of us feel like this is going to be a really exciting year- and not just because of graduation. I feel like there will be something really significant about this year, and I can’t wait to see what it is!

As always, God was faithful in 2008. I’d like to be able to say that it was the best year ever, and although it ended well, I can’t say that. It was a really hard year, for a lot of reasons. It was also a good year, because there are always good things even during hard times. But I am happy to move on to something new.