GOD HAS DONE IT AGAIN

I found this subject line on an email that, for some reason, went to my bulkmail folder. I didn't read through enough of it to see what God had to do with my winning (yet again) money from a dead Nigerian relation, as I think it's pretty obvious: God must be involved when statistics go this awry. I mean, that's my fifth Nigerian relative to die this month.

In other news, news that I dread telling, I got accepted to a grad program. This, I suspect, is also God's doing, since God knows just how to piss me off.

Now I have to make a decision. Honestly, I hadn't considered that when I sent the applications in, and I find myself at a loss as to how to go about it. This isn't one of those regular decisions, like what to eat today (which I so often answer with "nothing," anyway) or what to wear (which I never answer with "nothing" -- sorry) or whether to watch a movie or read a book or take a nap. This is one of those life-altering, nothing-will-be-the-same-again, what-do-you-really-want-here, where-do-you-see-yourself-in-ten-years-type decisions. It snuck up on me. Even when I got the acceptance email last week, I didn't think much of it.

Until I went to New York this weekend and hung out with my lovely friends, who are a mere two hours away, and who will still be in roughly the same places next year (NYC and Boston, anyway). And had such a great, relieving time that I couldn't imagine not being able to see them again for months at a go.

And I thought about my life right now, which is pretty satisfying, and how much fun I'm having being a fake (that is, unpaid) copy editor, and going on spur-of-the-moment road trips, and how my schedule is nice even when my job is stressful.

Then suddenly, I panicked. As though the fact that I was having fun meant that I was living my life immorally, I felt I needed to move across the country to go to grad school -- despite the fact that I applied there mainly because its deadline was Feb. 1, and that I had originally only intended to apply to schools in New England (Pennsylvania at the farthest), and that I don't know whether I want to work in the cultural studies field long-term (but can't think of anything more flexible or fun to study), and that it costs over $30K a year, and despite that I think I'd hate L.A. The honors-student, anal-retentive, I-hate-joy side of me started kicking regular-me's ass. And that bitch is tough.

The trouble is that in my mind, God is always on the side of the type-A personality. The strident moralizing of the evangelical church fits in well with the strident moralizing of the control freak; I am a recovering evangelical and control freak, so I am particularly susceptible to the foibles of both.

The other trouble is that I don't want to be wasted; I want to live a meaningful life. I just can't figure out what that means in practical terms, anymore.

Does it mean moving to L.A. and learning how to criticize (even more) popular culture and what it does to our brains?

Does it mean moving to Boston and working for one of those regional adult ed nonprofits I found while job-searching last fall, and being near friends?

Does it mean staying here in Connecticut to be with family?

I've always thought of intelligence as my primary quality, to which everything else was a distant second. I'm smart. I've always been smart. So I should get a doctorate.

But I've opted-out since college. I've chosen other courses, and they haven't been bad. I've done and seen and learned things I never would have if I had gone straight back into academia. And I like some of those things. I like some of them a lot.

What I don't like is all this pressure. If I decide incorrectly, I'm afraid of being cut off from my own soul, and that would be worse than any practical consequence. But which one is right? They all feel, potentially, like versions of hell. These are the options provided me by the supreme deity?

That God -- he's a wily devil.