on indecision

It’s Sunday night. I spent all day in the house, buzzing around like a little worker bee, moving from task to task, wearing my blue light glasses to help with all of the screens I need to be on for school right now. I’m getting another undergraduate degree from York University in Law & Society. There is so much to say about being a student again after having been an undergrad student over 10 years ago now… so much has changed. Obviously a lot has changed for me personally but the system, the world, the climate(s) have changed. So I feel very different and new in this new arena.

I honestly do not know what the plan is once I finish this program. I am fast-tracking the degree because so many credits were transferred from my last program so I am only here for a year and a half before I have these news credentials. Right now I am finding the learning interesting but not captivating. I am interested in other things. This current adventure feels like a means to an end in many ways. I do not think I want to go to law school. I want to study plants and people but mostly plants.

I want to keep bees (who doesn’t these days?) and grow my own food. I want to help people feel safe even when they are scared. I want to celebrate my parents when they retire. I want to be a good aunt to my sister’s children. I want to write and write and write. I want to travel. So why am I here? Why am I getting another degree with a bunch of people who are 18 (and I turn 30 in 12 days)? Am I actively choosing this or did I make a decision a while ago and decide to just go with it instead of changing the plans last minute?

In January of this year I applied for a few different undergrad programs. I was interested in political science but because you had to apply for 3 programs at once I chose York’s Law & Society program as my last choice.

I don’t know if I actually believed I would attend school in September at all but I was spiralling about the future (as I have done my entire life) and the brave thing to do was to dare to think about things being different. I just wanted to change my situation. I wanted to prove to myself that I could be different than the ways I had been up until that point. I didn’t want to work a full time job that was physically draining and emotionally unsatisfying anymore. I wanted to do something that felt like it gave me purpose.

Dreamy, ethereal and whimsical are all words I would use to describe my brain and thought patterns most of the time. I’m not totally here. When people say they have their people who ground them I do not think I am not one of those people. My head doesn’t feel like it’s attached to my body most of the time. It has made life difficult sometimes because doing practical things like eating or moving aren’t always automatic for me. So making 5 year plans or deciding how to make money or what to do or be in the world are all things I don’t enjoy thinking about. And the antidote to thinking about those things has been to just not make decisions about them at all. But by not making decisions about them I have spent the last 10 years making decisions to actively avoid the things that are scaring me. And that costs you something.

I went to university the first time and was thinking about Jesus and what I was here to do and I honestly probably thought I was going to go to school and someone would fall in love with me and he would probably become a pastor and I would have 6 babies with him and live on a farm and help people and I wouldn’t have to think about money and that would be that.

But then everything changed when I moved to BC at 17 for school. I felt overwhelmed about things like climate change and homelessness and poverty and world hunger and unequal distribution of resources. And I suddenly wasn’t willing to accept that those problems existed because people didn’t have the same beliefs in the same god as I did. But I was surrounded by people who were singing about how much Jesus loved them and it didn’t matter to me anymore. Or it was starting to matter less and less. I was losing my mind in a sea of “what ifs” and I was beating myself up for not choosing better for myself. I was really brutal to 17 year old Hannah who didn’t know what the heck she was doing (never mind the fact that she also had a completely different belief system than I do now). I was pretty anxious and depressed during that 5 year degree and I didn’t come out of it with a job or a relationship or any sort of concrete future plan. I was disoriented and things weren’t going to get better for a little while.

This time around I waited until the last possible second to transfer the rest of my tuition for school because I was really scared I was making the wrong decision. I look back at the version of me who moved across the country all the time for school and who wasn’t grounded at all and had zero clue where all of her non-decision decisions were taking her. This time I want to focus on making connections and doing something I can be proud of while also setting myself up for future steps.

Maybe it’s unrealistic of me or maybe I’m being too cautiously optimistic but I want to believe there are doors I haven’t found yet here that are going to take me to places I’ll be excited to explore. Working full time at the cemetery can’t satisfy this part of my brain that wants to solve real world problems and be of assistance somehow. I feel like I have so much to give and I just haven’t found the right channels for all of that energy yet.

This program feels like it’s giving my brain the food it’s been craving for a long time but it isn’t tugging at my heart strings like I know learning could. I’m dreaming about studying history or anthropology and specifically researching women’s connection to nature and its cycles. That’s what excites me. So am I crazy to be doing this degree? I don’t think so. I think I just had to start something to finally let myself figure out what comes next. I’m doing a thing to get myself unstuck and I’ve decided that’s okay. Making a choice always feels better than not making one.