Progress

I'm getting used to the idea of moving out. I think the problem was that I so stubbornly stuck to my mindset of "I want everything to stay the same." I forever pictured myself in familiar surroundings. I never imagined myself moving out. Because of that, I couldn't imagine myself moving out. If I moved out, I knew I wouldn't be able to handle the shock, because I never expected it. And I wouldn't have been able to handle it, if I'd still been stuck in that mindset. However, I started to realize that I was going to move out, I started telling people so, I started writing it down, and I began to accept it. After this began, I read an article in a New Year edition of a fitness magazine my aunt had lying around her house.

I usually disregard such fitness articles, because their advice is not known to work, but this article acknowledged that fitness tips usually don't work, so I gave it a chance. This article declared that we should focus more on mental fitness, because it can not only lead to physical fitness but also to overall happiness. It distinguished between the mind and the brain. The brain is an organ. The mind is what the brain does. It cited research showing that we can physically change our brain by changing our mind. Certain areas of the brain expand in response to how much we exercise certain strains of thought. We can change how we react to circumstances by imagining ourselves reacting differently. I liked this because I'm sick of hearing how our bodies control how we feel and what we think. No. Our bodies are controlled BY how we feel and what we think. (A Reader's Digest article I once read supports this. Our feelings control our hormones. Not the other way around.) The article asserted that happiness is our natural state; life was not meant to be a onslaught of drudgery with brief bursts of joy. If we are mentally fit, we can train ourselves to be happy. I have to agree. Unlike evolutionists, I believe the world was originally good, as it was meant to be, and people were originally happy, as they were meant to be. I'm sure the article was not the first of its kind, but I have rarely come across such positive, insightful magazines, and I liked it. It rang true, too. Just take my "moving out mindset" for an example.

I'm feeling a bit silly about my paranoia about moving out. I was sure I was going to get killed by the psychos that hang around college campuses. While I'm sure such tragedies happen in college, I think most happen to people who roam the streets and campuses late at night, get into cars with strangers, and crash destructive parties, and I can avoid all of that. I think -- I hope this doesn't jinx it -- I'm going to be okay.

I started my online college course. The workload is a bit overwhelming, especially after months out of school. I'm still getting a rhythm down. I spent the first week freaking out about the work. An not the even the work I was doing, but the thought of all the work I will be doing when I go to college fulltime and taking SEVEN classes. I was sure I could never pull that off. I'm still not sure. If I even try, it'll be back to the old days, when school took up every spare moment of my time and left me sleep-deprived even on weekends all through the school year. That was definitely among the worst parts of high school. Freaking out for a week made me fall behind. I'm still behind, but I'm catching up, and I should get back to it, so...

Till next time.