Paradigm shifts, coming up for air.

Again and again I am confronting the profound effects of the paradigm shift that began for me over a year ago. So much has happened since then. My father died, both my children returned to public school (we homeschooled for a good while), I returned to school, the economy crashed and I faced a very difficult personal task of trying to figure out how to create a strategy for the future. Today, unlike a year ago, I see my life as finite every day. Today I think in terms of probabilities all the time, no guarantees. I am also focused on personal goals that I held early on in my life; I've compared them to where I am now and am trying to reconcile the difference, which is vast. I am fortunate, extremely fortunate, to have the privilege of trying to pull myself toward a trajectory that is meaningful to me and to have the support of my family while I do so.

Monday I took all three of my course finals for Fall term. My grade for organic chem just came in and I can see I did well on exam, so I am sipping from that sweet victory cup today. I feel fortunate again, but wow did I work for that grade. I do not recall ever having to work quite so hard in a class. This was difficult in terms of sheer volume of information to understand together with a huge amount of work we had to produce. We had intensive labs, write-ups, loads of homework, quizzes, midterm exams and a research project including a poster and presentation. My other finals went fine too, I'm pretty sure - Cell Biology and Statistics. I cannot sit back now that the exams are over though. No way. I have a strategy to follow, and it involves dedication beyond a final exam.

Maybe it's just me, but the explosion of the blogosphere and discussion boards seems to have faded quite a bit from where it was 5 years ago. With the advent of Facebook and Twitter, blogs like this, journal-style, are perhaps too time-intensive for many people to read. How handy is it to read something more than a sentence or two long when you're reading it off your handheld device? I think a lot of people prefer the friendship network idea too, with a public display of their friend collection and one-off comments about their moment. Not much depth there IMO. Meaning is something I have been looking for, and I'm not finding it on Twitter or Facebook, but that is not to say I don't read entries there.

I'm hesitant to delete this blog because I guess I still have hope that a single voice can still be important, can have some kind of effect, can provoke thought or provide comfort or something, even if it is from a middle-aged woman fighting for purpose and meaning for the rest of her life, in the midst of a national economic and global ecological shift.