torn

Do you ever feel torn? Torn between friends, or between good and evil, or between your head and your heart, or even between heaven and earth?

I could seriously wax philosophical about this in detail... maybe some other time. ;-)

I have joked before that I'm an odd left/right brain hybrid. I can be the ultra-rational, mathematical, data-driven scientist one moment - and the beauty-seeking, bizarrely creative, light-chasing artist the next. Sometimes, it's a challenge to keep both sides of my brain content and living in harmony, without one trying to overpower the other - it's hard to find balance when science is tugging at you from one side, and the camera, or canvas, or whatever, from the other!

So I end up feeling torn. Kind of like I felt after this weekend. I spent an awesome couple of days behind the lens, and really reconnecting with my creative side in ways that I haven't in a long time. And of course, at the end of the weekend, I wanted to stay in that "place."

I've found that when I'm away from work, and have time to delve into the artistic side, it's difficult to shift back into science mode when I have to go back. I always end up mourning the loss of my freedom, and wishing I could stay in free-spirit-creative mode instead of locking myself back up in the lab. Yet I like being in the lab, investigating interesting science problems, too!

Ah well, it's a quandary, isn't it? Yet it's also a wonderful gift. Learning how to balance math-ish rationale with those artistic leanings is often just as much a challenge as balancing faith and reason. All part of learning to live in the fire, right? Learning to live with, and use rightly, whatever God gives us?

When I take a few steps back and really look at things, I always feel like I have close to the best of all possible worlds, but it really is hard to feel equally driven by such different things. On one hand, I'd love to spend all day behind the camera, every day. On the other, I don't know if I could really thrive without the scientific challenges I get to work on five days a week. I love them both, but most days, I'm not sure which I love more - and maybe that's okay.