Artful Balance

 

Artful Balance is my mental scrapbook for the year starting March 2019.

This year, I am transitioning between my current life living and working in China and my new life as a student in the United States, aspiring to enter the medical field as a doctor.

 

Here I store the clues I uncover to building the life I want:

thoughts that spark me, quotes that reflect my inner world, and ideas that fill my day ever more with meaningful self-directed activity.

​

​

It would be nice if every good idea arrived in a logical order, nicely packaged and with an instruction manual. But they hardly ever do. Inspiration doesn't always cooperate, and plans don't always come together on the first try, at least not for me.

​

(I would regard those for whom they do as extremely lucky.)

​

And I guess this isn't necessarily for them. This is for me and for those like me: having achieved much up to this point, but not knowing to where or how to go on next.

​

This is precisely who a scrapbook would be for.  Its blank pages are both accommodating – providing ample space for free-form filling – and telling – what they get filled with is a product of who you were in that moment.

 

A scrapbook calls for being decisive. Not necessarily neat or clean, but decisive. 

​

But the very source from which inspiration will come is also what gets in the way of my ever following through on something on a deeply satisfying level, the level of having produced something shareable with and appreciable by others.

​

It's my inner world.

​

My inner world, from which inspiration and motivation and impulse towards growth come, is also the source of my worries and anxieties and existential quandaries. 

​

The source of the voice that compels me to create – "What is my purpose? I need a calling. I want to create and share and have something worthy to offer the world." – is also the source of the voice that stops me in my tracks from doing so – "What's the point? Will my efforts today amount to anything? Will practicing discipline amount to anything? Is it worth it? Maybe it's easier to just not care." 

​

In this way, life and figuring out what I can do with it is an artful balance. The "balance" lies in distinguishing between different voices, opposing impulses. This can get hard because ultimately they all originate from the same place: me.

​

The "artful" part comes from doing so in a way that both respects reality (as I can best to ascertain it to be) and results in more empowerment, self-actualization, and self-direction in life rather than apathy, listlessness, or smothering my will to go forward. 

 

  For instance, one artful part of respecting reality lies in anticipating that each thing will have its season, including this mental scrapbook. Every project, no matter how in love with it I am and how far it carries me, will be outgrown at some point.

 

That's why it comes with an end date, February 29, 2020, one year from its first entry on March 1, 2019. Perhaps it could also be called a terminal journal.

​

​

Artful Balance is meant to be read as suggestions on overcoming periods of depression and anxiety, not as hard rules. It is also an offering of love and support to those going through it.

​

The bulk of what I want to share can be found on the "Inner Resources" page. Reading is a favorite daily discipline of mine, and it is through the written word my world has been shaped, reshaped, and positively  impacted the most.  This page is a mixture of  my personal writings and and quotes selected from my daily disciplines (which includes both reading and audio materials). If it's on this page, it's because they contribute something to my worldview-in-progress. 

​

In "My Affirmations,"  I have curated the most updated versions of my personal affirmations, which are real statements I read to myself each day about different niches and aspects of my life for the purpose of reminding myself of what I truly want from them. 

​

Most important is to note that this is all written in the context of moving past a years-long identity crises in my early 20's and starting to build the life I want. It is based on observations on rebuilding a life trajectory and purpose after years of indecision, anxiety, depression, burn out, prolonged unemployment, divorcing my spiritual and religious identities, and divorcing my original life path. 

​

​

Unsure if it will amount to anything, but curious enough to see it though, 

Yours truly,

Artful Balance