Longing

What do you think fulfillment looks and sounds like? Do you think we ever find completeness and contentment in this life, in this world?
I love my job, I really can say that and I am lucky to be able to. But it doesn't feel like the end.
I used to want to go overseas and do relief work, or to get involved in the big issues: human trafficking, immigration, clean water, etc. I still do. And I still don't: because at heart I am a homebody.
I love words and language: I want to become a writer. I want to sit and let the words pour out of me, and to make the world better with my writing, even if that just means writing a story that both lets someone learn something about themselves and gives them a place to escape. I want to study language, to know things about books and about language far beyond what I know now.
Lately, I've been craving the study of something concrete. I exist in a world of questions and shadows: human services is a land of no right answers. Language is a tenuous and changing thing. I have been wanting, actually deeply desiring, to study science and mathematics, things I used to loathe. I want to dive into something finite, something which contains yes and no, this but not that, something that abides by rules and reason. And yet, I know that the deeper I delve into something of rules and reason the more I will find places where even those rules no longer hold together.
Not to mention that, while fascinated by science and math, I've never been particularly good at either.
I want to travel the world. I want to see new things. I want to pour myself out.
I want to stay where it is safe. I want to surround myself with a small circle of those I intimately love. I want to embrace small moments.
This is what I think Ecclesiastes speaks to: that's why I love that book so much, why I read it beginning to end every couple of months.
If you're like me, you get caught up sometimes in the what ifs and imaginings, and the sheer possibilities make you feel lost in the abyss of a pattern you do not know the start or finish of. You feel as though you wander around blindly, hoping your steps are right, always wondering deep down if there's something more.
I can tell you from one who wanders just as you do: there is a time to cease questioning. There is a time to accept.
I know - we've always lived hearing don't accept, don't settle, don't be content. While we must each try our best, and refuse to accept mediocrity in ourselves, acceptance is at times what life is all about. To know you are doing a good thing - perhaps not the perfect thing, or the very best thing, but a good thing: such knowledge can be a precious gift, if you are content with it. There is no perfect answer - there is no one right path. There is no such thing as a place you cannot return from. Be happy with the place you are in. It is one of many good places.

"I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet^[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. ¹² I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. ¹³ That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God." Ecclesiastes 3

Gathering

Hello friends! How's things? I decided to sum up life in general in a list, with letters rather than numbers just to shake things up. If you make it through all the way at the end there's a something at the end I need your help with...

a) I finished/won nano!! so exciting :)
b) Work is, I hesitate to say aloud, going pretty well. I feel like I sorta kinda maybe a little bit am getting the knack of it
c) I have failed to eat proper dinner three nights in a row. Suffice it to say that's going in my New Years goals it's gotten so bad.
d) p.s. soon I'll be coming out with a New Years Challenge - plan ahead, you know you'll want in on it!
e) I'm going to bake. Tonight. because I am quite desperate for some sweets! Any spectacular recipe suggestions?
f) I'm going to be doing community theatre - 98% certain. Half of me thinks it will be amazing, and the other half thinks it's one of the stupidest ideas I've ever had!
g) Here's the one I need help with: I've decided to enter some short story competitions, even though I'm usually novel-length verbose. The problem is, as always, ideas: I'm taking nominations for stories you wish would come into existence. Ideas, anyone??