Coming to the realization that there was something fundamentally wrong with how I saw the world was a bit depressing at first, but I quickly found great value in it because it gave me a clear sense of purpose.

The New Goal

I now felt like a gardener who had been tending his garden and tripped over a root. When he went to pull out the root he found that it went deep and seemed to connect to a network of roots below the surface. Once he becomes aware of this he knows that he cannot plant the garden he wants until he clears the soil.

Using this analogy I realized that if I could pull out the first root with some careful thought and patient reflection, then why wouldn't I go back and get the rest of them? The more I thought about this the clearer it became to me that if I didn't do this work I would never be able to fully launch myself from the nest.

Leaving UNH (again)

Knowing that I had an unknown quantity of psychological work ahead I spent the early part of December finishing up my two classes, as well as allowing myself all the extra time to have fun. I knew change was coming. I knew that I needed to dive in fully and deeply. I could not have described exactly what I needed to do, but I knew that it was the single most important thing I could do at that moment and that I needed to take it seriously.

I had a sense of what I needed to do — now I needed to figure out where to do it.