Well the good news is, today I'm wearing clothes again. The bad news, my diet consists mostly of mint tea and various types of chicken based soup. And the parents have cancelled the family vacation to California...Aunt Dawn is sick too, and doesn't want to get off her deathbed to drive.

I've begun my first class. I've just finished reading The Problem of Pain and am halfway through my first paper. I bought a book by Pascal called Pensees which I used for a few quotations in the paper. It's not really a book, so much as a collection of notes for the book that wasn't written.

And tea break.

And kleenex.

And that's about it. Christmas is coming. My shopping is done. And most of the cards have been sent. I think. Actually I got halfway through the list, put it in a drawer, and forgot about it. Maybe I should check that out before my head goes back into fuzzy mode. oh. oh. Too late.

I'm not a big fan of medicine. I mean for the small stuff. Usually my preferred plan is suck it up and wait it out, because, after all, if we dope ourselves up for every minor illness, eventually it will take bigger and bigger guns to cure the bad stuff. And what happens when you run out of guns? Well, anyway, Fuzz. And besides, the study somewhere says that rats in the wild are actually far better able to combat illness than lab rats because their immune systems were allowed to come in contact with diseases and build up antibodies. (Is that the right word? Antibodies?) So, go immune system, go! And if it gets really bad, I'll spring for an Ibuprofen.

Little Red Boat is back from vacation, and pithy as usual. Hurrah!

And now I'm off in a quandary about what to do after the holidays. I'm exploring options again, and there's always the deal in California, which may be smart, but I won't have the chance to see it for myself before I have to be down there to work, and I'm running out of tolerance for "just a job." I'd sort of like to start focusing on whatever it is I want to do. Hm. Plan one, decide what it is I want to do.

Not so easy. I've been doing that for six months now (at least) and can't come to any conclusions. My only plan now is to keep exploring options for the time being and see what comes to the forefront. Reality is sinking in and telling me that I have a limited amount of time at my disposal (and likely shorter than I'm allotting). How much longer can I continue this inability to PICK SOMETHING.

The deal is, and maybe this is more a dear diary moment than a blog moment, but I made a mistake in high school. God called me to *something unspecific* and I chickened out and ran. I decided that I was going to be a performance person, and maybe tell somebody about him sometime. If I felt like it. And it was miserable. Not the performing part, but the everything else part. And I'm glad of that, because if it hadn't been, I wouldn't have told God to have his way because my way sucked. Then I took some time off, healed a bit, toured in a ministry capacity - that was nice - and then failed at a ministry after that. Badly.

So what do I do now? I love working in ways that allow my life to be a benefit to others. And I enjoyed the dinner theater because it combined the two - theater and ministry - but I've turned down two tours now since then. I have an aversion to "Christian" drama because it's often cheesy, and being in the forefront of "popular christiandom" has never been my thing. But then, do I want to go back into performing, which may have been a vanity thing. I can't tell. Was it the right profession but wrong then because I was determined to do it whether God wanted me to or not? Is it right now, or should I completely give it up and find something more worthy of what little time we have -- because after all, performing really is a very selfish job. So much of it is self-promotion, and while some people may be able to perform without turning into a raging diva, but many can't. If you become really famous that's another thing, because then you could "use your powers for good" though many don't. I have all this talent that I feel like I'm squandering. And then there's academia. I'm good at school. I like studying and learning. But what do I pick? I love theology, and english literature, and there's even a third-world economics and politics course that looks interesting. But that's several years of my life to dedicate to going back to school. I still haven't paid off the last degree that I only use occasionally. And then there's options like YWAM vs seminary vs public university programs. Or working for charities I already support.

Oh what a downer. But that's where I am, and could use some prayers because I need to pick something, and nothing's coming. Nothing's obvious. And I don't want to choose-- I, as usual, want to do it all.