ACCORDING TO ZAC

I grew up in a car loving family. If you need proof, my brother and I would fight over who got to read the new issue of Car & Driver  first when it showed up in the mail, I had a big collection of diecast model cars and Chevron Cars ( so cute! ), my uncle was a semi-professional racecar driver, and I still care a lot about liking what I drive and trying to keep my car clean. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked then that over the last 10-ish years the place where I've been most honest with God, and have subsequently made some big breakthroughs with Him, has been in my car. The breakthroughs haven't often been about a solution, but have often been because I've hit a point where I'm willing to pour it all out. It is certainly helped by the fact that I'm alone there and that I can pray out loud and do an ugly cry without my roommates hearing through our walls. But also, I'm somehow always coming from somewhere that I had been doing a lot of pondering, or a frie...

I feel like I’m at an intersection with a bunch of crossroads and exactly no idea what road looks even a little bit better than any of the other ones. Normally I find people in situations like this really unbearable. Can someone truly have no opinion about where they want their life to take them? Is it really that hard to make a decision and trust that it can get cleaned up if it doesn’t go as planned? But now I’m that exact person, and it’s not a great time. It’s interesting to consider my indecision, but perhaps more interesting to consider where that indecision comes from (does it sound like I’ve been in therapy a long time?). I think I’m needlessly worried that I’ll be seen as some kind of failure if I make a choice I have to back out of later. Who wants to eat crow? There’s some worry about how people might perceive me if I make a big life change they weren’t expecting. I also feel like this might be the first time that I need to make some decisions where there’s less immediate sa...

0/10, would not recommend a broken ankle to anyone. The cycles of life are at the forefront of my mind tonight. Or rather, my blindness to the cycles of life are what I’m thinking about. The last couple of weeks I haven’t been very happy with where I’ve been spiritually, and it’s been getting pretty frustrating. I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that I ought to change and ways that I could be different, but I’m struggling to break out of my rut and actually do a thing— anything —that will move me away from where I am right now. And surprisingly, I hadn’t really talked to anyone at length about it (truly an unusual occurrence). But I finally felt a little tug, and I went and saw my best friend Eric. He didn’t have the answers, but he was kind and empathetic and it was unquestionably time well spent. He and I talked about the phases we go through, some of which are of our own doing; we make poor decisions, we avoid certain things or people, we run away from what’s ha...

I felt like I was a pretty sensible teenager and that I kept my angst to a tolerable level. I doubt that anyone that knew me in middle and high school would agree with that, but I felt like I was reasonably well-adjusted. Any leftover angst that I didn't use throughout my teenage years manifested itself today when I got laid off from my job. Yep. You read that right. Laid off. I should say right here that I was very blessed to have that job at all. It enabled me to finish my degree, have really excellent health benefits, etc. Not to mention the fact that I really love a lot of the people in the Lunar and Planetary Lab. They're so great. But things are less great when two people you really like have to break the news to you that you're out. It was never the place I thought I'd settle and stay for the remainder of my working life, but it was a steady paycheck and a generally good place. I should also say that getting laid off is a pretty common thing i...

It's now 4 a.m. and I'm still not done. I've got some serious issues here. There's nothing more I'd rather do right now than sleep. If only...

It's 3 a.m., I'm still working on a paper, and I think I've gone insane. School can shove it.