Jen, Natalie, and I agreed to begin our 366 (as I’ve come to call it) on June 22, 2008.
Today is June 23rd, 2008.
A day late already? Surely this doesn’t bode well.
The fact of the matter is that I’m dealing with issues at work and, quite frankly, feeling like an utter failure at life. I can honestly say that I never envisioned me at 24 to be sloppy, without-a-hope single, broke, and horrendously unhappy. When I was a very little girl, I thought I’d long since have had my Barbie dream wedding and maybe even a kid or two. When I was in high school, I thought I’d be midway through a medical degree and, if I was lucky, dating a good man. I never, ever, thought I’d be living with my parents, working part-time as a cashier at a car dealership, and looking forward to a near decade of abject poverty as a grad student and a life spent entirely alone. Now my “maybe if I’m lucky” hope is to scrape enough money together to be able to be a single mom…sometime in my late thirties.
You’ve got to admit, that’s just a tad depressing. Couple that with getting royally screwed over (a second time!) for a ‘promotion’ at work, and you’ve got a young woman who spent the whole of the 22nd lying in bed, drinking tea, and watching most of the third season of Grey’s Anatomy.
Clearly, this particular moment in my life is not the best time to begin an exploration of spirituality. I’m emotional. I’m disappointed. I’m primed to believe in grown-up fairy tales and would dearly love some version of a magical godmother to whisk me away from all the cinders. This is not the way to find God. God has to have some bigger purpose than to be some magical band-aid. Spirituality has to go beyond selfish wish-fulfillment. It’s supposed to engender selflessness, for goodness sake! If I was really as smart as I’d like to think I am, I would run far, far away from this 366 project.
But I can’t. If there is one good thing that’s come out of the wasted past two years of my life, it’s that I’ve learned to gather my rosebuds while I may. Life is far, far too short to put off anything that might allow me to better myself. Besides, this is something that Jen, Natalie, and I all agreed to do together and my friends are the best things in my life right now. I’d climb mountains for them.
Three Hundred and Sixty-Six 
Something that’s gotten me through rough times is the belief that I’m meant to be here, meant to experience whatever seemingly negative event is going on at the time. Freshman year at DePauw was terribly depressing: I was totally insecure and thought about quitting or running away nearly every other day. But if I had quit, I would never have you or Natalie or become the person I am today. I was meant to be at DePauw, to meet the people that I met, to go through massage school when I did….I don’t if this has helped, but I know that there are better things in store for you and that you deserve all the happiness the universe has to offer!
Best of luck on your journey!