You're struggling with adjusting to life in the real world, stuck in the pattern of defining your life with your life's work. Perhaps your very problem is that you don't really want what you think you want.
I make no excuses for being a religious man, I just am. That view tends to be wildly unpopular in these circles, possibly because it treads upon the contemporary ideas of control and success. The same concepts causing you so much pain right now. Nonetheless, I'll happily plant this seed and hope for it to sprout. What you're missing isn't some quantifiable success story or achievement, but rather a deep, meaningful relationship with your creator.
This isn't an ode to mediocrity, but like someone else said choosing a different measuring stick by which you measure your life. And, really, a call for you to stop flogging yourself with that same stick.
True, in my experience, prayer is sometimes the only solution.
"Each of us will have our own Fridays...those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.
But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death, Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.
No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come.
I make no excuses for being a religious man, I just am. That view tends to be wildly unpopular in these circles, possibly because it treads upon the contemporary ideas of control and success. The same concepts causing you so much pain right now. Nonetheless, I'll happily plant this seed and hope for it to sprout. What you're missing isn't some quantifiable success story or achievement, but rather a deep, meaningful relationship with your creator.
This isn't an ode to mediocrity, but like someone else said choosing a different measuring stick by which you measure your life. And, really, a call for you to stop flogging yourself with that same stick.