What Sustains Me? (Part 2)

What sustains me?
How do I make my own life 'sustainable'?

Part 2: Psychological

For the sake of discussion, let us divide ‘psychologically’ into two categories: emotionally and intellectually. Obviously, we all know these two overlap and affect each other greatly in life, but they provide useful organization for a complex, and rather personal, topic. For no particular reason, I’ll begin with emotional sustainability and then discuss intellectual sustainability.

Emotional status deals mainly with all the relationships in our life. Most intimate is our own relationship with ourselves, one we can never be rid of, except upon our final departure. As such, it’s also the relationship most affected by everyday life. Over the past five months in Breckenridge, I’ve had my share of ups-and-downs, but overall I’ve been on the happier side of the spectrum. A major portion of emotional sustainability is a sense of dignity and identity. As a twenty two year old, I’m still building my identity. Of course, at ninety three my grandmother is still playing around with her identity as an artist, discovering the artistry of writing stories, so I guess it’s a pretty long journey, creating your identity. I’m certainly in a exploratory, nomadic stage of my life, and while its not particularly stable, I’m happy to be in it. The next most intimate relationship is that of the romantic and that’s been about as abysmal as second grade, when I didn’t even know of the possibility, so it certainly hasn’t been contributing to my emotional sustainability, or detracting from it with any significance for that matter.

So I move on to a topic a bit more interesting: community relationships, friendships. Honestly, the transition to Breckenridge was one of the harder ones in my life: I knew no one on my arrival and I’m not the best at initiating friendships. But now, with five months past, I’m feeling much better about having a community I really enjoy spending time with. And to be honest, I’m pretty surprised it came in the form of a Christian youth group, but that’s life for you! I appreciate their living for more than the superficialities of life, even if I’m not particularly passionate about the beliefs. I am finding it interesting to learn about Christian relationships with God (and I suppose belief in God to start with.) And with my friendships come investigation into spirituality, something I’ve always enjoyed in my life. Funny enough though, I’ve been able to go hiking with the group, which has increased my sense of connection to nature, another relationship significant in my emotional sustainability, and my interest in sustainability as a cultural idea.

And I realize now I’ve skipped past an important set of relationships – those with family and friends back home. For the sake of family connection and support, I have weekly conversations with my parents. I’ve been exchanging letter with my old roommate, Michael Vogel. Max Gordon, on the other hand, is all but unreachable in St. Petersburg, Russia, so I look forward to his return to the States. Something I’m beginning to realize, however, is that with good friends whatever time passes, you start talking again and everything’s right there. No cobwebs to dust away, no awkwardness, the time has no impact, other than perhaps more stories to tell each other. Anyway, I think that’s about it for emotional sustainability.

Intellectually, well I’ve been slacking, as evidence in the long gap from January to April in my blog. And unfortunately, mental pursuits are an important part of my identity and general satisfaction with life. I find great joy in learning, which I’ve been satisfying with a lot of reading as well as with my various occupations: I learned how to waiter and how to teach snowboarding. Both of these tasks have improved my confidence in social situations. And this summer, I have a new job painting, so I’m looking forward to gaining a new skill set. Still, I’m considering more actively including learning in my life in the form of classes at the local college. Also, since the painting job provides more regular hours, I’ll be returning to my project (quick preview of the next post: the realignment of my project).

The other big portion of my intellectual sustainability is creation. This has been perhaps the greatest gap in my current lifestyle. Most of what I’ve done is a few drawings and fiddling around on the ukulele. What’s been annoying is the lack of intentionality, as it prevents any significant growth – and growth is what really makes creating enjoyable. I’m trying to be a bit more directed and to that end, I’m considering instituting a scheduled hour a day for creative pursuits. I have enjoyed some of my rather crude craft projects: building my shelves out of cardboard boxes, building a drying rack out of branches and coat hangers. Without tools (and intentions to move around a bit in the nest few years) anything more is impractical.

So to conclude, I’d like to do the following to make more days of flourish:

1. meditate
2. investigating/learning
3. planning – more intentionality