Searching for identity...

I have been here at grad school for over a year now and in that time I have had my life turned upside down; not just by recent events but by the journey that I have been on since I left Calgary in August of 2005. I set out to earn a Master's degree and to perhaps write about the oral traditions of my family. But what I was really setting out to do was to try and reinvent myself once again.

Back then my main plan was to get a graduate degree so I could teach sessionally and work on a doctorate back in Calgary. But I have been forced to abandon that plan or at least the Calgary part. In doing that I am forced to really take a closer look at just who I am and where it is I want to take my life.

This has become a search for identity, one that does not involve the active participation of another person beyond the role of adviser and/or facilitator. Obviously some of my choices will depend on the support and approval of others. Getting funding is the first big step along with being accepted into a doctoral program of my choosing and then deciding if I want to actually do that.

Just where I will live and where I will study are still open for discussion and decisions all of which depend on other people accepting my ideas and opening the necessary doors for me. Joseph Campbell argued that if you were "following your bliss" then things would happen to support you. Over the next six months I will find out if I am where I belong and doing what I am supposed to do right now. I will discover my new identity as it evolves. Not all of the choices will be mine. They never are. But I cannot stand still, cannot stop living, cannot stop thinking, cannot stop struggling to understand, to make sense of one of the most difficult and challenging times in my life.

For now I have to focus on the details of my work. I have ideas to study, research to conduct and papers to write. I need to get organized to shoot my documentary, which includes getting some funding to cover my expenses. As for my bruised and battered heart, I believe I must put it into suspended animation as it were. I simply cannot risk being hurt again.