Isolated?

Ever feel like you were truly alone? Did you avoid intimacy with even close friends and relatives because you felt that you would be either exposed or damaged by them knowing you? It's a really stinky place to be.
I've done a lot of self-assessment and discovered something about myself that is difficult to admit but liberating.
I always believed that if I considered myself worse than the next guy that it would drive me into isolation, and I was right. But I didn't consider the other side of the coin. If I think of myself as more successful or better than the next guy it also drives me into isolation -built of pride. The negative isolation makes a stigma of me, and so I feel too inferior or shamed to associate with "the better people." The pride isolation makes a stigma of others making me feel like I can't benefit by association with them or could even be tainted by their "less than" status.
I think of ancient scripture which puts mankind all in the same category of having failed and come short of their Maker's ways.
I relate with people the best when I focus on neither my accomplishments and moral strength or my failures and moral deficiencies. This is when I embrace the humanity and potential of the other person and their freedom of choice, truly relating with them as being intimately connected with me as a fellow being, outside of their successes or failures.
Think of the atmosphere among rescued ship passengers aboard the rescue vessel, all together in joy and mind, genuinely connected as sharing a common peril. Camaraderie prevails.
When I neither ignore or point out the differences between me and someone else, I can enjoy intimacy with them, embracing them and our differences in one messed up, beautiful package.
That type of relationship prevents isolation on both sides.

Be OK with not knowing.

I'm starting to realize that if I try to be confident about my plans and future, I shrivel into insecurity, because I cannot do what I said I was going to do. So I just have to #1) try to find out what God wants today and do it, and #2) stop blabbing my big plans to people. Oh, maybe a 3 too. #3) don't try to live up to people's expectations.

Feedback. Feedback, guys. Hmm, maybe I should market this thing better. (-;

-Yore Truly

Study skills

I'm going to be honest with you guys. I'm terrible at studying, just mustering up the tenacity to crack open the text and read it until I understand the concepts.
I'm interested to know what your struggles and strengths have been in hitting the books.
Please write freely, and mention whatever resources you have on learning how to learn, just as long as they aren't books. (-: -no, honestly, throw whatever you've got at me.

-Yore Truly