Anne Woodland

     Something I've been thinking about recently is that life is never entirely ideal.  It makes sense since the concept of things being ideal is that they originate from an idea and ideas are very hard to fully convert into reality, especially when the cooperation of multiple people is involved.        This has been on my mind because I constantly feel like I'm in some sort of waiting period of life, and I don't want to wait my life away.  There are things I want to see and do, and obviously, there are going to be periods of my life that are better suited to doing certain of those things, but I can't just sit idly expecting life to send me a sign that says, "Now would be the perfect time to do [insert project]".  That's not going to happen.  I have to figure out that stuff for myself, which is probably a good portion of my issue: I'm not very self-aware and balancing one's life requires being able to judge how much you can take on...

     Perhaps it's just me, but life seems to be a balancing act between expectations and disappointments. Disappointment is part of the human experience; we all experience it at some point.  Still, in order to avoid disappointment, we moderate our expectations.  The question then becomes: which is worse: disappointment, or perpetually low expectations?      Going off my own life experiences, I'd say that low expectations are more debilitating, but that doesn't mean that disappointments are less painful, just that you're more likely to attempt things if you have higher expectations. In that regard, it's easier to live with low expectations for yourself, in that, you don't have to attempt much and failure is just proof of your sound prior judgment, and not an indication that you should try again harder.       I'm not sure how to reconstruct my expectations in a positive, but reasonable fashion. It's something I'm currentl...