Transcribing a paradox

It's almost midnight on Thursday and I find myself in a peculiar position.

Before I go on, I have to say that it is very peculiar to have to bless yourself after you sneeze. Try it sometime. It feels weird, trust me.

Anyways, I'm trying to motivate myself to further the transcription of the interviews for my thesis. I should be done with them by this weekend, which was the goal and I should be done with the first draft by November 15, which was the goal as well. However, I've hit that point that I knew I would hit when I first took this topic and idea on a few months back. I thought I had prepared myself for when this moment came, yet the moment has come and I'm truly not prepared.

My topic is religious identity and interfaith relations, specifically with this organization in Los Angeles. I wanted to observe an interfaith community and see how they deal with religious identity on a personal and collective level. So far, so good. The problem is that this topic doesn't lend itself to a nice, tidy thesis that such topics as "Why MySpace is factually the Anti-Christ" or "Branding cheese in the 21st Century" do. Not dissing anyone else studying cheese, but this was the decision I made.
By going through these interviews and meetings and examining the research and what is happening, it becomes obvious that this is just the starting point. It's not even the starting point, it's the point that one starts. There is a very long, robust, diverse documentation that needs to be done out there, much longer and better than this clunky thesis for a clunky masters.
Nevertheless, here it is. I refuse to give absolutes because there are no absolutes. I refuse to create theories because one theory works in one context and another theory works in another context. Plus, academia is for wimps.
Thus, what in God's name do I write about?

It really dovetails into my current state of mind at the moment. There is SO MUCH out there, SO MUCH to do, SO MUCH to see, SO MUCH to experience, SO MUCH to live. Where does one start with SO MUCH? Annie Lamott would say start where you're at. Right now, I start at a paradox: the urgency to make money because I'm about to run out of reserves and I want to leave L.A. and breathe new air (literally) and finally create a community and finally meet somebody and finally start a family; and the patience to wait for the hottest coal that's burning, the patience to wait for the right time, the right place, the right girl, the right (....).

That is the paradox of the bridge from kid to adult. At some point, values and priorities are going to line up and take their place. When the list solidifies, the moment comes when you wake up in the middle of the night or somehow stop cold in your tracks and you have to pay attention. You have to care.