past, present & future
I've been pensive of late. I don't know whether to listen to it or drown it out with other things. I'm sure there's plenty there for me to learn, but I question whether I'm ready for those lessons, and whether I get a choice in the matter (knowing that if I don't, it's pointless to resist).
I was dressing for work thursday and I slipped a silver bracelet on my wrist. I felt the weight of it in my hand, admired the metalwork, and remembered its origins in burma. There was a time when trips to Burma were a feature of my life. When I had tan lines on my toes and the permanent glisten that comes with hot & humid locations. The calendar tells me it wasn't that long ago, but it's difficult to remember that person as myself.
Prior to that, I was a promising scholar at a famous university, engaging in rarified dialogue on abstract topics. My days revolved around ideas, publications, and funding applications. There's no need to romanticize them-- they also were plagued with angst, poverty, anemia of the ego. Exotic things always look better from a distance of time and space.
These days, I am a number-crunching civil servant. My work is utterly unglamourous by comparison, as is my life. It's not a bad life, and it's a life I worked hard to set up. It is comfortable, which I value. I go to work, I come home, I drink beers and coffee with my friends. It is perfectly pleasant, but seems a bit hollow. Aside from my dissertation, which feels like clean-up work, there is nothing that I'm working towards. I lack overriding passion, drive or vision. I lack a plan. I don't know what I'll be doing 6 months from now. That's a new thing for me, and I'm trying to learn to be okay with it, but that doesn't mean I like it. I used to be a very driven person; I got shit done. My biggest accomplishment of the last 9 months is showing up. I'm willing to cut myself slack given the circumstances--some days that *was* a big accomplishment--but I want more out of life. Not just in a content sense (given that I don't actually know what I want right now), but in a standards sense. This is not enough.
[fyi: this is not a complaint about the quality of my lifestyle, which I know is better than many peoples'. it's about my own need to find meaning and add value.]
I was dressing for work thursday and I slipped a silver bracelet on my wrist. I felt the weight of it in my hand, admired the metalwork, and remembered its origins in burma. There was a time when trips to Burma were a feature of my life. When I had tan lines on my toes and the permanent glisten that comes with hot & humid locations. The calendar tells me it wasn't that long ago, but it's difficult to remember that person as myself.
Prior to that, I was a promising scholar at a famous university, engaging in rarified dialogue on abstract topics. My days revolved around ideas, publications, and funding applications. There's no need to romanticize them-- they also were plagued with angst, poverty, anemia of the ego. Exotic things always look better from a distance of time and space.
These days, I am a number-crunching civil servant. My work is utterly unglamourous by comparison, as is my life. It's not a bad life, and it's a life I worked hard to set up. It is comfortable, which I value. I go to work, I come home, I drink beers and coffee with my friends. It is perfectly pleasant, but seems a bit hollow. Aside from my dissertation, which feels like clean-up work, there is nothing that I'm working towards. I lack overriding passion, drive or vision. I lack a plan. I don't know what I'll be doing 6 months from now. That's a new thing for me, and I'm trying to learn to be okay with it, but that doesn't mean I like it. I used to be a very driven person; I got shit done. My biggest accomplishment of the last 9 months is showing up. I'm willing to cut myself slack given the circumstances--some days that *was* a big accomplishment--but I want more out of life. Not just in a content sense (given that I don't actually know what I want right now), but in a standards sense. This is not enough.
[fyi: this is not a complaint about the quality of my lifestyle, which I know is better than many peoples'. it's about my own need to find meaning and add value.]