Hopes, Dreams, and the lack thereof

[eyefragment]

I was originally going to make this into a fairly long, drawn-out post with some musings and a cutesy anecdote at the end about a dream I had recently, but that never happened and it seems too daunting to do right now, so I'm just going to get this off of my chest

Comments

Midlife crisis? No - the constant crisis of an examined life.

[ch3cooh]

In the past, I've found that a 'cure' for these situations is to stop doing everything 'normal' for a bit and do /nothing/ but read books, watch episodes of foo, walk places, sleep, eat, bathroom (one time wen I did this, I made 200 ridiculous paper snowflakes) - and if I do this for long enough, I get curious again, something catches my eye and I want do it - a project of some kind. It helps that I'm surrounded by awesome projects: like friends who want to randomly explain math and physics in the ESP office, and students who want things that I could teach them better explained.

I think the long term goal is that you find that one of these projects comes more than averagely easily to you - you're good at it - and it needs doing. Then doing it for the rest of your life seems like an awesome possibility. But you don't do exactly that for the rest of your life, something changes or goes wrong. And then you, in time, accept that life wouldn't be interesting if 'that one perfect thing' were ever really the end of the story - you try something, it works or it doesn't, repeat... -- you just have to try things like this and take the good parts (see plethora of quotes about life...) And... that's kind of all there is? (I'm not religious, insert religion here if you want a climax to the story, insert romance if you want more plot twists)

Also, know/learn what you need. If you need a job that gives you constant positive feedback, try to find that. If you need to see a tangible product... if you need to make it perfect... if you need to be competitive... etc.

Re: Midlife crisis? No - the constant crisis of an examined life.

[eyefragment]

I don't think this is quite it. I'm definitely familiar with the "drop everything normal" strategy, but that's one that I adopt for managing burnout, and I'm not feeling burned out right now. Similarly, I've got projects that I think are fun and come more than averagely easily to me (see: anything that has to do with programming or math), but I gave up on the latter, and I don't see a good way to turn the former into a "dream," per-se. Definitely 'ppreciate your passing along thoughts/advice though.