A Return

I have not written a single post since I came out of the atheist closet (very clumsily, I might add) on my other blog two years ago. The last time I posted here on this platform, I was teaching junior high history part-time, working for an engineering firm part-time, and full-time deconstructing my Christian faith. Life got in the way, and I lost some direction with my plans for this blog. Honestly, I also lost interest. Fast forward to June 2019.

I am 28 now. I am working full-time at one of the largest privately owned companies in the world for great hours and great pay. My SO and I are in our 4th year of marriage and about the hit the 5 anniversary mark. I have been out of the Christian church for over two years now. I’m in therapy to process the spiritual abuse I suffered, as well at the fact that I’m just a human being that struggles to embrace a will to live. I have changed a lot, but many things have stayed the same.

I’ve picked up a new direction for myself after processing the last 6 months in therapy. It’s new, but still the same: I love literature, and I want to teach in university. That has been a dream of mine ever since I first sat in Dr. Peterson’s Advanced Composition class as a freshman and drank in every word. I told him today on a Facebook comment thread that his classes basically gave me a reason to get up in the morning.

I lost sight of my dreams after I graduated in 2013. It was a combination of the Quarter-Life-Crisis, the glut of the academic job market, and the Weight of Student Loan Debt that convinced me that, just maybe, my dream of one day teaching literature in university (in a study abroad program, I might add) might not be realistic or practical or even wise. So I let it go.

I started bartending and discovered that I am actually very good at it. I made a career out of talking about beer and pouring libations for the regulars that started to accrue at my humble restaurant bar in Waco. And I continued to ignore the dream that had died an ignoble death in 2014 when I unceremoniously dropped out of my MA program and ghosted my professors. Honestly, I came to love my job bartending so much that I grew complacent in my intellectual and professional life. If you’re familiar with the Enneagram, I am a 7. And that means that I crave fun and distraction and spontaneity. I run from pain and difficulty. Bartending was fun. Bartending was easy. Bartending was lucrative. But it’s ending. And in every ending, in every death, there’s still a seed for a new beginning.

Events have transpired in my personal life such that I am leaving a job that was simultaneously life-giving and soul-sucking. I am now at a job that offers me normal hours, normal pay, and a chance to create a rhythm to life again. And in that job I have had the chance to reignite my dream to become a PhD.

I can’t wait to spend time reading again. I can’t wait to study for my upcoming GRE exam. I can’t wait to rise to the challenge of applying for graduate school. I’m not afraid of failure anymore. I’m not afraid of the difficulty. And I sure as hell am not afraid of the financial aspect (side note: budgeting is empowering).

I’ve missed writing. I’ve missed the empowerment that comes from assembling words together into something meaningful and beautiful. So I am making a return to this blog. I get that the blogging market is glutted, and maybe no one will read it (that was always hard for me; I love to share what I am learning). But this is for me. It gives me life.

A return to something old is yet new beginning.

Love,
FW