Do, Be, or Both?

Should I be blogging right now? Probably not. I have a lot of homework to do, as usual. Oh well. In the name of therapy I will write this blog post, because it will make me feel better.

I'm afraid of the constant "doing." I need space and time to be, but I'm not getting it, or I don't make time because I just want to veg. School and the workplace are task-oriented institutions. By task-saturating myself in projects, homework, papers, etc. I'm preparing myself for a task-oriented life, especially being a media major. I was reminded recently that people in media-related jobs often work long hard hours. Ten hours a day is an average day for someone working in production.

Meaningful work is what it's all about. If I'm going to be DOING so much in my life I need to learn how to BE in all the DO. Right now, I find it hard to multitask. Either I DO projects or I BE with people or with God. It's only when I do projects for someone (and that someone doesn't have to be someone else. It can be myself) that I find meaning in them. Doing projects with people is simply not enough. I don't know if this is a personality thing or a fundamental being-human thing, but I need my focus to be on restoration and reconciliation of relationships at all times or I simply do not feel like I am living. When I simply do things, with our without people, I feel like a robot cranking out results instead of a person loving God and others undoubtedly, directly, tangibly. I've got to have a mission and that mission has to be clear and relationship-building. And gosh, it is hard to simultaneously do and be as a film and video production major where the goal is to get projects accomplished to the best of your ability within the constraints that are given.

Half the time in production I am interacting with a computer screen. Fun! But fulfilling? If I am interacting with others as a Producer of a project I am in a stressed and flustered state of mind. I think it bothers me that in producing documentaries or narrative films my goal is to "get something out of"a person or actor rather than "invest in them." Maybe there's a way to do both. There's gotta be. But my flustered self is often focused on the pressure of "I gotta get this done or I'm in trouble" rather than "this is really about you, not about the project." I'm not in my element here. Tasks do that to you. They make you motivated by fear. I HATE FEAR.

This might be the most confusing post I have ever typed. I'm really not sure where I am going with this, but God brought this passage (2 Corinthians 5) to mind so perhaps it is a fit way to end:

¹⁴ For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:^[a] The old has gone, the new is here!  18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹ God made him who had no sin to be sin^[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.