Tree Thoughts

I've been thinking lately. About trees, careers, dreams, growth.

We have different stages of life. That is good, but stagnating is bad. It's the people who seem frozen in one stage that concern me. I have a friend who has had several different careers. Every six to eight years he would switch to something fairly different. From engineering to sales to being a triathlon race director to being a lifeguard to being a paramedic to being an account manager. That is the kind of life I want to live.  That is the kind of life that it seems you would look back on and feel the least amount of regret.

I love climbing trees, but there is one here at school that just is leagues above the rest. It is my absolute favorite one to climb anywhere. From the outside it is a perfect "tree" shape, a rounded out triangle. From the inside it is a maze of intertangled branches forming almost a spiral staircase. As soon as you know which branches to duck under and which ones to climb over, you start to see all the possibilities. There are branches that are perfect for looping you arm around and taking naps, or standing, reading, sitting, lying down, and the list goes on. The leaves are all on the outside, creating a green dome around you and the branches cradling you sway as the wind rustles through them, sending down a swirl of little green helicopter seed pods. These create a carpet at the base of the tree, a perfect nursery shaded from the sun's fierce glow where inch high seedlings begin to unfurl.

I want to write. But (as you may notice from looking at the blog archive dates on the side) as soon as the semester’s class let out and I stopped getting assignments to write, my mind has been functioning as a black hole, sucking away any idea fragments that slide past and funneling them into far away oblivion. That’s not good. It really doesn’t bode well for my dreams of writing. Why can’t I just be inspired enough to write on my own? I also feel that I can’t write anything good on purpose (even when I can get words onto paper). If there is anything good, it’s a complete accident. I’m walking into a major that will definitely stretch me and teach me a bunch of things that I need to learn and that’s great, but also very daunting.

I have this problem. I think it comes with being an extreme dreamer. I’ve also heard that it is related to my personality (INFP creating the acronym I Never Find Perfection... hmmm...). Whatever the case, I can be extremely passionate about something, latch on to it and pursue it completely, but then once I’ve started getting into it, I get discouraged and lose interest in it, finding continuing on that track to be nearly impossible. Tie that with being incredibly future minded and you get a mess. I really want to major in English–I promise. Really. But right now I’m taking a bible class, moping about not having any writing ideas, drawing out completely useless floorplans, and trying to sort through future plans. I’d like to get my MFA in creative writing (haven’t taken any classes as an English major yet) but I’d also like to get my Master’s of Divinity and become a chaplain at a children’s hospital. That could be my steady job so I could write, too. But my day job was going to be being a college prof. Why did I want to do that again? And why a chaplain? Right now I’m about the last one of my friends that I would go to for advice or counsel or comfort, etc. (Yeah that makes sense, doesn’t it? I detach myself from myself and wonder among my friends and decide to sit down and have a conversation with myself... no, just kidding.) Or I could move to England. Or do all of it, piece by piece. But what first? Oh whatever. Conclusions are elusive and currently irrelevant. Why can’t I just focus? Like on finishing writing the paper that’s due next week? ...

Looking up at the dome of the leafy cathedral