Dis/Comfort

Sometimes I wonder if I've gotten too comfortable with my life.

I mean it.  As much as I dislike the fact that I've remained officially unemployed for so long (it's weird how volunteer work somehow doesn't actually count as work), and as much as I really don't like still being under my mother's roof when I'm going to be turning thirty years old in a few months, I wonder if perhaps I've gotten too comfortable with these forms of discomfort.  I'm starting to wonder if I'm too used to experiencing disappointment in my job search, and if I'm just too accustomed to feeling stuck and boring and lonely.  I'm even starting to wonder if some part of me wants to stay this way.

I also wonder if I've gotten too comfortable with the state of my spiritual life.  I'm so accustomed to going to church on Sunday, mentally adding my own private Pagan musings to what I'm seeing, hearing, and doing as part of an Anglican church, that somehow some of the flavour seems to be gone out of it recently.  I'm so used to going through the "Wheel of the Year" with my own private observances and reflections that incorporate some aspects of Christian thought and practice that seem appropriate to the time, that I'm starting to wonder if I'm doing all of this out of habit.  I wonder if, since I joined my church choir, I've become too Christian and not remained Pagan enough.  (There are certainly those who would argue that any amount of Christianity in Paganism is too much.)  This path still has meaning for me, and that's why I'm still walking it.  I don't intend to give up on it any time soon.  But even so, I still have doubts, especially because I could easily be seen as being part of a privileged group (Christians) who is wrongfully appropriating aspects of a non-privileged group's culture and beliefs (Pagans and Neopagans, and the various cultures and traditions from whom their beliefs are drawn).  So much of my philosophy of life is wrapped up in this idea that kindness, compassion, and respect for other people is absolutely essential, and cultural appropriation is something that just—please forgive me for using a fan culture term here, but it just absolutely squicks me.  The possibility that I'm actively taking part in it because I couldn't stick with just one or the other is, to say the least, somewhat disturbing.

And I miss my closest friends.  Somehow I've managed to just fade into the background with most of them.  One is living across the border until sometime around the end of August, and I haven't seen him in a couple of months; the border guards really scared me the last time I went into the USA, and though I can certainly understand that it's their job to make sure that it's safe to let people into their country, being "subtlely" accused of being a homewrecker, a slut, and a possible future illegal immigrant really gets old after a while, especially when these things come with not-so-veiled threats of being detained or refused entry into the country unless I can prove without a doubt that I intend to return to Canada in a reasonable amount of time.  Another friend is so busy with various things in her life that if I hadn't randomly run into her while we were both running some errands at the beginning of the month, I wouldn't have seen her at all since sometime in May.  Another—who is somewhat paradoxically the friend with whom I've had the most contact in the past month, and from whom I'm trying to withdraw a bit because I'm getting a bit afraid that I'm annoying him—is in a city that's several hours away until the end of August, researching and writing what he hopes will be his first book.  And every time I've tried to make plans with the other two in the past month or so, those plans have always fallen through for one reason or another.  It's a little discouraging, to say the least.

So it's reasonable to say that I'm not precisely in the best mental space right now.  I need to re-engage with the world again somehow, and I need a bit of positive discomfort in my life.  Something that helps me to move forward, rather than the discomfort that I've got right now, which is just making me feel stuck and hopeless.  Darned if I know how to invite it in, though.