Mixed Up

I started a new, work-away-from-home job at the beginning of the year. And while I couldn't be more excited about what I've been hired to accomplish and the people with whom I get to work, I miss following my thoughts where ever they might lead, whenever they might decide to go there. I also miss being able to rearrange my schedule at a moment's notice in order to visit or speak with a friend.

My new work is a delight. And I have given up setting my own agenda. I made the choice to go back to full-time work perceiving some of its potential cost, and I do not regret it. I know that when the learning curve with my new job plateaus, there will be more mental and emotional energy available for the relationships and the creative endeavors that inspire and sustain me. Yet. I cannot ignore that I feel excitement, hope, and grief. Not one after the other, but all at the same time. Is there a word in our linear, category-creating language that expresses this complexity, this twined experience?

After a less than exhaustive search, the closest I've come is "muddled." Not all of Merriam-Webster's definitions for this word work for me, but "to make turbid or muddy" and "to mix confusedly" do. Excitement's pure sparkle, hope's golden glow, and grief's dark ache certainly make for a turbid, muddy, confused concoction. Hints of the straight-up emotions remain present, but together they create something completely different, the name of which I'd also like to know.

Over the past several weeks, I've been slowly making my way through Poets on the Psalms, a collection of essays edited by Lynn Domina, and I've been struck by how prevalent this all-mixed-up feeling is to the psalmists. I'd never noticed that before, so I'm grateful to the poets who've introduced this possibility to me, particularly when I'm so muddled myself.

I want to honor the experience of being muddled. The very fact that I can feel what seem to be mutually exclusive emotions simultaneously is so obviously and gorgeously human. Why would I want to be anything but what I am, who I was created to be? And yet it would appear to be, from this human's perspective, so much more efficient, not to mention less confusing, to leave the muddling to the making of Mojitos—lots of them.