Can't Think of a Good Title Right Now

But maybe that's appropriate because I can't think of a lot of things. Normally, I'm a pretty decisive person. Lately, I can't seem to decide what I want in a number of things: whether to go back to working a full-time job or keep writing, which woman I want to pursue, whether I want to go through the training necessary to become a Christian counselor, where I am best able to serve in the church, even which of the two cameras I just got to keep.

When I was working in the corporate world, I wasn't very decisive, but then, I didn't need to be. I was given orders and I carried them out like a good soldier. I worked my butt off, too, because I had people I was trying to impress or something I was trying to earn. There was not only a goal, but a negative consequence for failure, and that consequence was more severe than just having to work another weekend or late night. It was the disapproval of those who had given me the task.

I've realized recently that nearly all I do has been with some goal in mind of pleasing others. I've been doing P90X in part for health reasons, since heart problems seem to run in the family, but more so I can look good at the beach this summer. Why? Because at least one of the women I'm interested in prefers guys who are very physically fit. I buy games and movies that others seem to like so they can be happy they invited me over. I even learn some things more with the goal of coming across as intelligent than because I really wanted to learn them. I cook more complex meals more often now for my friends than for just me. And strangely, even though there's some part of me that realizes what many of them want is to be able to understand me and read me, I deny them that by keeping a stone-faced visage when I'm not laughing or miserable.

In short, I don't know anymore what makes me truly happy. I enjoy certain things, but I enjoy them more for the results than for the doing of them. One exception is baseball. Another might be math, though there is certainly an element of doing math that makes me feel intelligent and I still base a sizable portion of my identity on how smart people think of me as, all while concurrently wishing they wouldn't find me intelligent because that seems to alienate me to some of them. Maybe hiking in the woods is a third. But none of those are things I can do for a living. None of those are callings, at least not in my life. What is it that I'm supposed to do here and why? What is it that I enjoy doing, rather than doing it to make others like me?

I feel so false right now. It's not that I've lied about anything I've written here, either in this post or before (though it must be admitted that I am far too human to live up to the ideals hitherto presented); it's that I feel I've been living for others all this time and not for myself. And I don't even know how much I should be living for myself. I mean, I know I should be giving my life over to God to let Him work what He wills in it, but at the same time, I want that to be my decision, not a caving in to someone else's preference.

I heard a quip a while back that a friend reminded me of yesterday, "God, please let me be the kind of person my dog thinks I am." Right now, I'm just praying, "God, please let me be the person who doesn't care what kind of person my dog (or anyone else) thinks I am. Let me be who You want me to be."