Rock and a hard place
I've never been very good at making choices and usually avoid them by giving myself a lack of options. I usually leave my wallet at my office so that I won't be tempted to bring it home with me and spend money. Admittedly, to leave one's wallet in the first place is a choice (one can choose, I suppose, to refuse choice). At the same time, however, we cannot deny that this choice does in some way arbitrate against choice. I fit myself into corners and thus make fighting my only recourse.
Anyway. As most of you may know, I've not found Korea to be the most ideal locus for my mind and body. It's an exceptionally conservative culture (whose sole goal is to find me a girlfriend) and doesn't offer much in the way of interesting conversation (probably because the conversations are never directed at me but instead at what isn't there--my girlfriend. Such is life I suppose, to care more about what doesn't exist than what does.).
At the same time, I'm disgustingly prosperous here. I usually manage to send $2,000 CDN home each month and rarely want. For this reason, I'm entertaining thoughts of staying an extra year to earn "just-in-case" money. Money that would allow me, for example, to take a second M.A. in the U.K. "just-in-case" I don't get into a Ph.D. program of my choice and have to return to U of T (I don't mind (and actually would be eager) returning to U of T but I do mind returning to U of T having taken all of my degrees there--I'd only feel comfortable with at least a little training outside of Toronto).
I am inveterately Type A and plan to a point where I begin to circumvent my plans. Indeed, my back-up plans are usually counter-intuitive to my Plan A's. I am an incessant planner but there is something habitually paradoxical about the notion of a plan. For any notion of the future resists the idea of futurity itself. Plans only project what is happening onto what will happen. In a way, I guess, they're false prophets. It is easy to mistake any open mouth for an oracle. What does a map draw? The coast, the topography, those little inlets and passageways? Or merely itself? This endless self-referentiality is merely tautological never enlightening.
Am I just too caught up in my "career" to accept what comes to me?
AFTERTHOUGHT:
Reading over this entry, I've noticed the recurrence of certain strands of words, all of which are related to "habit": usually, inveterately, habitually, incessantly. Is the dispirited tone of my post expressive of a frustation of habits hard to break?
Anyway. As most of you may know, I've not found Korea to be the most ideal locus for my mind and body. It's an exceptionally conservative culture (whose sole goal is to find me a girlfriend) and doesn't offer much in the way of interesting conversation (probably because the conversations are never directed at me but instead at what isn't there--my girlfriend. Such is life I suppose, to care more about what doesn't exist than what does.).
At the same time, I'm disgustingly prosperous here. I usually manage to send $2,000 CDN home each month and rarely want. For this reason, I'm entertaining thoughts of staying an extra year to earn "just-in-case" money. Money that would allow me, for example, to take a second M.A. in the U.K. "just-in-case" I don't get into a Ph.D. program of my choice and have to return to U of T (I don't mind (and actually would be eager) returning to U of T but I do mind returning to U of T having taken all of my degrees there--I'd only feel comfortable with at least a little training outside of Toronto).
I am inveterately Type A and plan to a point where I begin to circumvent my plans. Indeed, my back-up plans are usually counter-intuitive to my Plan A's. I am an incessant planner but there is something habitually paradoxical about the notion of a plan. For any notion of the future resists the idea of futurity itself. Plans only project what is happening onto what will happen. In a way, I guess, they're false prophets. It is easy to mistake any open mouth for an oracle. What does a map draw? The coast, the topography, those little inlets and passageways? Or merely itself? This endless self-referentiality is merely tautological never enlightening.
Am I just too caught up in my "career" to accept what comes to me?
AFTERTHOUGHT:
Reading over this entry, I've noticed the recurrence of certain strands of words, all of which are related to "habit": usually, inveterately, habitually, incessantly. Is the dispirited tone of my post expressive of a frustation of habits hard to break?