I'm not sure what's got me worked up tonight. I found myself pacing my bedroom, the downstairs, and even contemplating a walk in the cold, foggy night. In the end the walk lost because I shivered inside the house even as I paced, but I'm still unable to settle. This happens when I'm in Macomb. After sleeping for a few days I catch up on rest and begin to pace the confines of my parent's house, the street, the town. It doesn't help that I left my purse at the restaurant tonight and now have to wait until morning to discover if I still have a purse or not. I'm not good at waiting, though I am better than I used to be.

So what is it about the holidays that makes me more ansy each year? This is a question I've been pondering lately. I look forward to the winter break from school; I look forward to seeing my family. But I get here, the holidays come and I am...dissatisfied. I understand part of it is seasonal depression, and I understand part of it is the increasing loneliness I feel each passing year I'm single, but I just can't, or don't want to, admit that is the totality of the reasons for the way I feel. It could be, I am honest enough to admit that. At this particular moment in time I will admit that were I madly in love I think most of my edginess would disappear. Of course, were I madly in love I would be having exorbitant amounts of mad sex and that might play into things a bit. So perhaps the answer is that simple. That possibility is depressing in and of itself.

It might also be that while home for the holidays my copious amounts of free time leaves me naught to do but read and think, and as reading spurs my thinking, I find I think a lot. This isn't a bad thing, but free from the bounds of school and the world (while home it feels as if most of the world's problems are miles away and of little consequence) my mind turns to my own existence as a human being and the people I know. That is rarely a good thing as we are all well aware.

But neither can you back away from it, I think. When you ask yourself "What kind of person am I? Am I the person I want to be? Is the person I want to be really a person I could admire? What can I do to better myself?" you end up with a lot of headaches, but I wouldn't say it's not worth it. Even as I find myself challenged by my family--they don't accept my status as an educated scholar as worth anything, only my words and actions serve as proof--I find myself simultaneously irritated and sharpened by it. Challenge is a good thing, it helps you discover the answer to all those questions and, if evaluated honestly, it can help you become what you want to be. But challenge of who you are, the knowledge you believe to be true, is so much more tricky. It is not easy to admit that what you know may be incorrect. And even if you can admit it, it is almost impossible (at least for me) to engage in a conscious effort to change it.

Wrapped up in all of that is the ongoing battle of sorting out which challenges are worth taking on, and which challenges aren't. With anything in life when someone challenges what you believe--a coworker, a family member, a friend, a crazy on the street--not every conversation is worth ruminating on. But, if I discount something just because I don't like where it comes from I am not the person I wish I were. Do you see my dilemma here?

I think what makes this all so darned frustrating is that the only way to really evaluate yourself is to be honest with yourself. If you look at yourself and realize you swim in negativity every day by choice then you have to accept what that means. If you look at yourself and realize you chose to see the flaws in others because you don't think yours matter you're left feeling very bereft and sorry. True self-evaluation is a horrific thing to engage in because it means you have to really acknowledge what you don't like about yourself. And more than acknowledge it you have to be willing to work through it. Change it. Or at least, stop it from coloring your world view. Otherwise it isn't actually true self-evaluation. And we are all wired, as much as we may hate ourselves sometimes, or even al the time, to survive. That means we look at the world how we have to to make it through. Talk about fighting biology.

And so what I'm talking about here isn't a self-help book or a new year's resolution. What I'm talking about is incredibly painful (at least for me) and that is attempting to look at myself as I really am and how my actions affect others. Acknowledge how incredibly transient I am in the world and how little my actions affect others. All of this simultaneously and also attempting to not become egotistical every time I succeed in one or the other because that defeats the purpose of the whole thing. I suppose you could say it's very Buddhist of me, or dialogic, or just one woman's attempt to not be a crappy human being. But whatever it is while I have progressed to a place where I can recognize it happening, it is still damned painful to go through. At least before it was just a series of bad days, a moment of enlightenment, and moving on. Now it's like a cracked out Karate Kid movie, except I know what I'm supposed to learn at the end. All of Ralph Macchio's whininess with none of the excuses of youth or naiveté. What a winning combination.

In any case, this is probably all happening mostly because I lost my silly purse and now I can't sleep. I've waxed on so now I'll wax off. I bid you good night.