The return.
being away from journals for a month, or has it been months? has been interesting.
Having no real outlet for my musings and rantings has forced me to channel them into thesis work, which has been very productive. Unfortunately, I don't think my brain is able to remain focused on a single topic for long periods of time. I crave alternatives, even if the alternative is just another field or subject of inquiry in philosophy, I gotta shift. Zig and zag, and then zig again. The possibility for burnout is very real when you spend hours and hours a day thinking and reading about the same thing for weeks at a time. If the MA thesis work taught me anything, and it did, it was the importance of comfort. Both physical and mental comfort is required to produce anything proper. Reading fiction, snoozing in the sun, playing video games, spending hours brewing pots of tea, and the whole raft of other fine distractions are required for the continued production of work.
This reminds me of an interesting distinction people often draw when talking about their jobs and their lives. Folks tend to either define themselves by their job, or view it as a necessary but unpleasant means to an end. To put it another way, either people live for their jobs, basing their lives around it to the point of excluding anything unrelated. These folks hang out with friends they made at work, talk about what they did at work, think about their work when not at their job, and so on. Focused, career type people. Then there are those folks who realize they need money to be able to do the things they want to do, and so get a job simply out of financial demand. The hobbies that these folks have are their focus, and the job is an unpleasant but necessary sideline reality. The thing is, I could never figure out where I stood on this. I seem to do both at the same time. I have a number of sideline sources of income, odd jobs and the like, which are just a means to an end. I need cash to eat, travel, and play paintball, so I need extra income spikes. On the other hand, I have been chasing this phd for a long while now, so that huge portions of my life revolve around university study and philosophy. The investment in uni is up around 7 years now, and I guess what has me up in the air about all this is that I am unsure if I am going to make a career out of all this. It looks to me that if I do head down the philosophy path, then I have been a focused career guy for these many years, while if I don't, I will have been indulging a lengthy and expensive hobby kept afloat by odd jobs. In the meantime, I have a Schroedinger's cat for a life.
Having no real outlet for my musings and rantings has forced me to channel them into thesis work, which has been very productive. Unfortunately, I don't think my brain is able to remain focused on a single topic for long periods of time. I crave alternatives, even if the alternative is just another field or subject of inquiry in philosophy, I gotta shift. Zig and zag, and then zig again. The possibility for burnout is very real when you spend hours and hours a day thinking and reading about the same thing for weeks at a time. If the MA thesis work taught me anything, and it did, it was the importance of comfort. Both physical and mental comfort is required to produce anything proper. Reading fiction, snoozing in the sun, playing video games, spending hours brewing pots of tea, and the whole raft of other fine distractions are required for the continued production of work.
This reminds me of an interesting distinction people often draw when talking about their jobs and their lives. Folks tend to either define themselves by their job, or view it as a necessary but unpleasant means to an end. To put it another way, either people live for their jobs, basing their lives around it to the point of excluding anything unrelated. These folks hang out with friends they made at work, talk about what they did at work, think about their work when not at their job, and so on. Focused, career type people. Then there are those folks who realize they need money to be able to do the things they want to do, and so get a job simply out of financial demand. The hobbies that these folks have are their focus, and the job is an unpleasant but necessary sideline reality. The thing is, I could never figure out where I stood on this. I seem to do both at the same time. I have a number of sideline sources of income, odd jobs and the like, which are just a means to an end. I need cash to eat, travel, and play paintball, so I need extra income spikes. On the other hand, I have been chasing this phd for a long while now, so that huge portions of my life revolve around university study and philosophy. The investment in uni is up around 7 years now, and I guess what has me up in the air about all this is that I am unsure if I am going to make a career out of all this. It looks to me that if I do head down the philosophy path, then I have been a focused career guy for these many years, while if I don't, I will have been indulging a lengthy and expensive hobby kept afloat by odd jobs. In the meantime, I have a Schroedinger's cat for a life.