Biblical Lot's Stress Fractures

It's been a difficult month. I'm feeling the physical effects of extreme stress, lack of money, and a new (and financially unsatisfactory) job. Living less than paycheck to paycheck is taxing in so many ways.

My hope is not totally lost. Many great people in history have died penniless, at the expense of inspiring others.

Honestly, I probably shouldn't be so dramatic about it. Everyone goes through shitty financial circumstances, and mine could be so much worse. The most stressful part seems to be working my ass off and not making what I deserve. I'm disappointed with every paycheck, because it's gone immediately to (usually overdue) bills.

Is this the life I wanted? I've asked myself this so many times in the last 30 days, but the words have not lost their meaning. I've got to keep asking, because I need to make sure I'm still on track--with all this messy, consuming stress laying about, it's incredibly easy to want to backpedal. Undo all this ground-removal and put the corpses back underneath me, so I can bury them again and stand comfortably upon them. Forget their names and their lives, like I had before. It was so easy.

For better or for worse, this is what I wanted. I wanted to dig them up and catalog them so I could remember how I came to be. I wanted to write in publications, be free to come and go, and make my income wherever I land; however, getting finances in order is the first step to what I want. These are the circumstances that occasionally accompany it. And for me to survive them, it has to continue to be what I want. I can't stray my eyes away just to look back.

I've been told that I've been stubborn my entire life. Maybe this is why--so that when I'm running so hard that stress fractures my bones and breaks me piece by little piece, I'll keep running, because I simply do not believe in stopping.

"And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes."