New direction in my life

I am working on a significant decision these days and realigning my life's aim. On my own, in response to my current situation, I have made the decision to re-apply for school. This will be my third attempt at graduate school, but the first time I decide on it on of my free and open will. The first attempt was simply timely filler to attend to while looking out for my brother while he went for his Bachelor's degree. The second attempt was a misguided effort following my first job and following the directions of both my former employer and my mother.

One major drive is that for years, I have been ashamed of my failure at graduate school. This shame is not simply a defeat, but a response deeply rooted in who I am and how I identify myself. School, learning, and curiosity are my life. Yes, I have a satisfactory personal life outside of school, but gawds how I love the information management within school. Reading, responding, and creating are among the activities I do best.

My failure at these is rooted in multiple sources, including being raped, being insecure, and being genuinely inexperienced. These latter two sources were compounded with my desire for delivering what would be, in my opinion, beautiful work, leading to perfectionist mental crisis where I could idealize, but not realize, any real work. The first mentioned source brought a violent end to my belief in the worthwhileness of effort; it made me forcibly realize that no matter what good I did, someone else could always take it from me or even end me if they so wished. This realization proved dangerous to my sense of self and in a misguided attempt at protecting myself, I let myself and my work go; I let school, my results, not matter. Of all my apparent choices at the time, this may have been the best choice, however misguided it was; it allowed me to work through and deal with my trauma rather than post-pone it, something I feared would have had more explosive consequences given my creative side's partiality toward homicide as a means of drastic change.

Because of my shame, I have been unwilling to confess or share the absolute shittiness of my academic record since January 2005 with anyone. I have not told the extent of it to anyone and remain disinclined toward doing so even now. It is my burden, it is my problem, and I am the one who needs to fix it and myself.

***
My recent resurgence on this blog with daily entries thus far this month is part of my effort toward regaining my academic self. Here I now write with the goals of coherent writing and a daily average amount of words, in preparation of writing, completing, and handing in papers when I return to school. The blog is also public and, though few will read it, it is open (or I think it is open) to comments and judgments from whoever cares to provide them. I am freeing myself to writing publicly, a most necessary skill when writing as part of a class setting.