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Thanks for sharing yourself so openly and honestly, Gravitystar. You're among friends here...and I understand exactly what it's like to throw everything into a long thread, and then just hope that there are people who will reach out to me and offer connection. (Also, I think we're the last people in the world to judge you for making a particular story so much a part of your life that it shuts out everything else.)

I've been where you are. Not in an identical situation, but similar. Like you, when I was younger, people told me I had all this potential, but I didn't know what to do with it. It was easy to be one of the smartest kids in a little Minnesota high school, but then I ventured out into the world and found out how brilliant everyone is, you know? Also, I had people looking at my SAT scores and saying, "with those scores, you shouldn't have any problem finding scholarships..." so then I'd fill out the scholarship forms, wait...and I did get one scholarship, but nothing compared to the cost of Bethel College. It just didn't make any sense to me, that people would say this "ought" to be easy, but then give me no concrete ways to make it easy, and no help when it didn't turn out to be easy at all. I've come to believe that the world really just is messy and confusing, and although we look for opportunities, we don't control the times and places they come to us. I wrote a story about it once. I don't know whether it conveyed the things I was trying to convey (I'm afraid that's one of the most frustrating parts of story writing for me--that I get so abstract I don't really know what I'm doing)--but the image at the end is of my two main characters riding a canoe together through the mist. They have some control--they can paddle and keep it upright--but where and when the canoe touches the other side isn't up to them. It's out of their hands--it's in the hands of the river. But they have enough control to stay afloat in the meantime. I think that's what life is like. (Generic "you.") You do your best, and stick together, but you never blame yourself for opportunities not coming, nor be suspicious or think it's too easy when opportunities are handed to you.

So, I do have a few pieces of advice for you!

I think the first advice I have is to understand what you want out of life...not just a career goal, although that's part of it--but what is life to you? (To me, it's friendship and connection and understanding, underlaid by faith). Part of the reason that we put stories in place to fill those holes in our lives is that we don't quite understand what ultimately will fill them. (And stories can be part of filling those holes. Now, with Prince Caspian coming out in the United States, I'm remembering just how integral a part of me the Chronicles of Narnia are.) Remember too, your interest in X:WP--the way that sometimes all you want to do is go home and read/go home and watch--that kind of frantic interest won't last forever. For me, it was the joy of having a hole filled that had never been touched before--everything changed, everything was so much brighter, and I wanted to shout that to the world. So...yeah...be patient with yourself. Xena isn't the only driving force you have in your life, but you'll integrate it in with everything else, and I think that's okay. Some people are just built that way, you know?

If I were in your place right now, I'd take a week off the Net. I did that right before the Burbank convention (well, okay, four days, but I'd intended it to be over a week). I viewed it as a kind of fasting. I wasn't cutting the Net out of my life entirely, or even recategorizing it as a bad thing or an obsession. All I was doing was to take something good out of my day, and then see who I was without it. I live in my own apartment, so I don't get a whole lot of 3-d social interaction during the weekdays. So I did a lot of journaling, some reading, and a lot of crocheting. It made me a bit more aware of who I was as an individual, instead of "Jeanine's friend, Dee and Bill's friend, XOC family member, etc."--as integral as those definitions are, there's more to be seen. (Just let us know where you're going so we don't worry! )

It was so neat to finally meet you at last. You are a talented person with a lot to give, and I hope that the people important to you can see that you are already doing what you're supposed to be doing at the moment, and you're searching, just like us all.