Joy on the Spectrum

After some consideration and prodding from friends, I have decided to adopt my own little virtual corner and start a blog. I have had some mixed feelings about the blogging trend. In some regards it seems a bit self indulgent and presumptuous. I have had doubts that anybody would actually care to read my own limited musings (and they may not, only time will tell). I just wasn't sure that anything I could think or say would be interesting enough to merit the electronic space it would occupy. But, in the end, I gave in to the temptation to share. Perhaps I am like the sinners begging Dante to carry their stories out of Hell into the world above, my story may not merit recognition but I still want to share it. I think that this desire to communicate, to be known by what one writes, is something that I share with most people. After all the "tell all memoir" is not a new idea, people have been confessing since Nebuchadnezzar grazed in the field. Though our generation may seem obsessed with sharing every detail of our lives, we are not the first to want to do so. I think that people, as a whole want to be known, we want to tell people what we really think, and we want them to acknowledge, that yes, our thoughts are significant. So here I go, perhaps I will somehow stumble on something significant.

Those who knows me well will recognize the title "Life on the Spectrum" as a reference to my mother's ongoing observation (hopefully joke) about my compulsive, moderately neurotic tendencies. I thought it was an appropriate title for my blog. Like all of us, I fall somewhere along many spectrums. At five foot six inches, I am somewhere comfortably in the middle of the height spectrum; I have never been considered particularly petite or terribly tall. I am probably closer to the outer ranges when it comes to the spectrum of tidiness; I persist that compared to some I am quite neat, but by my mother's standards I am a complete, incurable slob. Again I fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of intelligence; though able to hold my own on most standardized tests, I will never be invited to join MENSA. And perhaps most importantly, I find myself somewhere along the grand spectrum of life. At nineteen, I have passed out of the foggy days of young childhood, the awkward tween years, and the whirlwind of high school, but I have not yet completely entered into the "real world" of independent adulthood. I am a college student caught in a sort of limbo here in the middle, trying like, so many my age, to figure out what should happen next. So here I sit, living on the spectrum, between knowledge and ignorance, between idealism and cynicism, between grace and works, between here and there. And, like all of us, I am looking for joy as a I travel down these spectrums. Wherever you fall within the spectrums of your own life, I hope you will join me on this search.