Emotion and Faith

With the year winding down, I’ve found that my emotional state has affected my everyday life. I had three goals this year: get a girlfriend, get a literary agent and get my own place. I quite honestly don’t feel any closer to any one of those goals now than I did the beginning of the year. I have made efforts in good faith with all of these goals, and I keep coming up short. With getting a girlfriend in particular, I seem to run into some sort of barrier at different stages of getting to know a woman. It’s quite honestly difficult for me to even get to a point where I can meet a woman for a cup of coffee.

Combined with getting constant rejections as far as getting a literary agent, and the difficulty in saving money for a down payment for my own place, I have been left with questioning things such as how I approach things and what measures I can take to change my situation. Everything has an opportunity cost, so if I decide to take a side job, for example, then that will take away from writing/editing.

My faith gets tested as well. If I keep failing even though I have made sacrifices and put constant effort, then what lesson am I really taking away from this? Is the lesson that putting effort to a goal is useless, and therefore, I should not strongly pursue a goal? Is this more akin to the story of Job from The Bible where I need to just stay patient and persevere, and hopefully, I will achieve these goals?

When I took this journey of becoming an author, I figured that it would be very difficult. Rejection is becoming something of the norm, and I send out a query letter to a literary agent with the expectation of not getting something positive back. I didn’t realize how much that it would wear down on me though, and I guess that this is where faith and belief really get tested.