Friday, August 08, 2003
A long time ago--I must have been 13 or so--I made a decision to always seek to grow and move forward. To never quail from progress due to fear, to always seek to improve. This decision has shaped everything in my life--from the way I dealt with my mother's death, my choice of jobs, and my choice of husband.
I am feeling a bit lost right now because I feel so spiritually disconnected. I have a longing for the outdoors and feel completely disconnected from nature. I have no idea what to even label my spirituality/path. I decided to again look at buddhism, to try and implement some of its elements in my life. I borrowed a book from a co-worker, Ellen, who I guessed was buddhist-or at least dabbled :) I'm reading a book from her, The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron.
In her first lecture, she mentions that "when people start ot meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are." I have a hard time intellectually understanding some elements of her point. I have always tried to seek improvement from a place of acceptance of who I am now--change can take as long or as slow as it wants. Is this what she means? Or is somehow the whole idea of improvement 'wrong'. I don't suppose it matters. I can just work it out for myself--perhaps clarity will come eventually.
I like one of her first paragraphs, " To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is."
++++++
As to law school, it looks as if I am going to have to put the LSAT study on hold. I am looking for a new job. My current employers gave me a nice notice that they were demoting me and reducing my pay. Impossible for me to deal with right now given my financial situation. I can't believe that they wouldn't think this would result in me finding a new job. It is particularly galling in that B, my supervisior, made the error of mentioning that he "knows it is hard as a new mom to balance everything, I mean, I'm a new dad and all, but I have Emily at home and I'm willing to give up my personal life." Whereas I'm not. They are lucky that I don't sue them, giving me this on the tail of my return from maternity leave and making a comment like that to me!
One of the job possibilities that I'm pursueing will dovetail into law school and future job prospects perfectly. It is a more CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) oriented job, rather than pure Bio/Regulatory. If I end up pursuing environmental law, it will be extremely valuable to have a deeper background in CEQA law.
It is so true that if you keep your eyes open, seemingly bad things that happen can turn out to be good things.
¶ 5:00 AM
I am feeling a bit lost right now because I feel so spiritually disconnected. I have a longing for the outdoors and feel completely disconnected from nature. I have no idea what to even label my spirituality/path. I decided to again look at buddhism, to try and implement some of its elements in my life. I borrowed a book from a co-worker, Ellen, who I guessed was buddhist-or at least dabbled :) I'm reading a book from her, The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron.
In her first lecture, she mentions that "when people start ot meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are." I have a hard time intellectually understanding some elements of her point. I have always tried to seek improvement from a place of acceptance of who I am now--change can take as long or as slow as it wants. Is this what she means? Or is somehow the whole idea of improvement 'wrong'. I don't suppose it matters. I can just work it out for myself--perhaps clarity will come eventually.
I like one of her first paragraphs, " To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is."
++++++
As to law school, it looks as if I am going to have to put the LSAT study on hold. I am looking for a new job. My current employers gave me a nice notice that they were demoting me and reducing my pay. Impossible for me to deal with right now given my financial situation. I can't believe that they wouldn't think this would result in me finding a new job. It is particularly galling in that B, my supervisior, made the error of mentioning that he "knows it is hard as a new mom to balance everything, I mean, I'm a new dad and all, but I have Emily at home and I'm willing to give up my personal life." Whereas I'm not. They are lucky that I don't sue them, giving me this on the tail of my return from maternity leave and making a comment like that to me!
One of the job possibilities that I'm pursueing will dovetail into law school and future job prospects perfectly. It is a more CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) oriented job, rather than pure Bio/Regulatory. If I end up pursuing environmental law, it will be extremely valuable to have a deeper background in CEQA law.
It is so true that if you keep your eyes open, seemingly bad things that happen can turn out to be good things.
¶ 5:00 AM
