a first step (in a complicated process)

photo © 2006 Till Krech | more info (via: Wylio)I registered for 2 classes this week.  I'm not sure how I feel about this.  Excited?  Relieved?  Overwhelmed?  Worried?  Hopeful?  All of the above?

Surprisingly, I don't feel any particular strong emotion about this.  I'm relieved, I guess, that the first step toward another degree is taken.  But I'm so ambivalent about it.  I'm a little worried about balancing the classes with work and family, but not too worried (yet).  I'm a little worried that this will end up being a waste of time and money (because the long-term process of getting a degree still seems so overwhelming and beyond us), but I'm pretty convinced it's worth the one-semester risk for now.  I'm not worried about being able to hack the student thing again, but I am worried that I'll be bored out of my scull in a 3-hour-class anatomy class. 

I wish there were a master plan clearly laid out for me.  I wish it were obvious.  Not easy, necessarily, but obvious.  It's the doubt and wondering that bug me.  Is this step right?  Is this step wrong?  Or is it somewhere in between?   I'm not typically a black-or-white kinda person.  I'm more comfortable allowing for greyness in life, but sometimes I wish I were more black-and-white. 

A few weeks ago on Grey's Anatomy (which I've stopped watching, but I caught this one episode), the Christina character is looking at a bride's magazine and telling the therapist character that she wishes she could be simple like the brides in the pictures.  She wishes she could be less complicated.  I get that.  I wish I could be less complicated, sometimes.  Less wishy-washy.  More sure.

But I'm not.  And on balance, maybe that's best.  After all, the grand master plan of my teenage years has been all shot to heck.  I'm not exactly where I thought I would be.  And that's OK; good even.  We just can't know exactly what's in store for us, so it's good to hold plans loosely.  But it's also good to have plans and work toward them.  So I'm looking for that balance in the middle where I can be excited about possibilities and work toward good goals without grasping them so tightly that I am overwhelmed by disappointment when those possibilities don't work out exactly like I'd expect.  And I don't want to worry so much about the future that I miss out on present blessings.

It's a balancing act, as is much of life.  Right now, I'm not very excited.  But maybe the excitement will come later.  In the meantime, I believe it is right to take this step.  I don't think I'd call it a step of faith.  A step of hope, maybe.  I don't know where it will lead.  And that's OK.  Remind me of that in a few months when I'm in classroom purgatory!