Dear God...What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

I am not sure what has gotten into me. It feels like discontent. As Prince said, "Maybe I am just like my mother. She is never satisfied." But in my mom's case, she is never content. And here I am, feeling like I am rolling a boulder uphill, knowing that it will just roll back down the other side. King Sisyphus always did seem the most tragic of mythic figures, outside of Prometheus, for the sheer uselessness of his effort.

I am sitting in my living room, contemplating whether to make myself imitation Crystal Light or pour myself a (small) glass of brandy. I love the glasses I use for brandy. They are real crystal and make the most delightful "tink" when tapped gently. The imitation Crystal Light will go into a regular clear glass. I want the brandy. Is it wrong to choose a drink by the container into which it is poured?

I quit my job about six weeks ago to finish up my MA. My money has run out, and I need to reestablish a flow of income. I have enjoyed devoting my time to school, but spending the majority of time in my house doing homework is starting to give me cabin fever. Feeling like King Sisyphus is enough of a challenge; I don't want to add Jack Nicholson's character from The Shining into the mix.

I spoke to the English Master's director today and realized the final project I wanted to do (a travel journal for a trip to Costa Rica, where I would save baby sea turtles and learn to surf) may not be possible time-wise unless I postpone graduation by a few more months. And the scope of my project really needs to be narrowed down. So that's something to consider.

Then, what happens after I get my MA? That could be less than six months away. Plans are a good thing to have. Until having so many turns me into a control-freak extraordinaire. So to summarize, my discontent with my life as it was prompted me to stretch out and try something (many things) different. But every step feels unfamiliar and scary, so I walk around semi-frozen, afraid of making a wrong decision. I can ask for input, but at this level of creating my life, ultimately my decisions defer to me. It's exciting. I learn a lot. But I have no idea exactly what I am doing.

And with my glass of brandy in hand, cheers to learning to live with the unknown.

Oh, speaking of dead kings and horror movies, I make a dreary zombie.

Cheers!

What's next?

It has been almost two years, and I sent out with the goal of doing something worthwhile with my life based on that merit badge book mentioned in the first post...You Can Do It! (And not the one by Louis Hay, although I own that one too). I have since come to decide, in doing so, I take life far FAR too seriously. It's like I do not want to do anything unless I have a goal with end results, which are measurable. There is a problem with this, simply because along the way, the journey will reveal possibilities never even dreamed of.

This blog posting is going to go off as more of a rant. I just have to much to say and need to get it off my chest. Since no one reads it, that is quite okay. Besides, even this blog posting is prompted by a goal with measurable results. At the end of 2010, I decided to go back to school to get my Masters in English and become well-read. Two years of graduate school, and I am staring down my thesis project, which is seeded in this post. As for being well-read, I've read more, but my to-read list has exploded. So about that thesis project thing, I have a piece of creative nonfiction I want to write. In writing it, I will also have to write about writing it. Higher educations in the Humanities....metacognition is not enough. One must think and document the metacognition going on. A blog seems a perfect place to do so! And when I have to bundle up all my reflections, I will have a place to collect them. I intend to set up a different, more professional, looking blog to chronicle the chronicle of my life, but till then, this blog is a perfectly lovely place to track myself. I should probably describe my project. Nah, I am going to put that off for now. But as a hint, true to the roots of this blog, it involves sea turtles and Costa Rica.

SO instead, I will share another rumination. I was driving around, blasting the heat in my Jeep, considering fall. The whole cycle of life, death, and rebirth. October always takes me to meditations on this subject. I went to one of my favorite coffee shops and got a tuna sandwich on lettuce. Then I came home, lit the gas-fire place, and made some sugar plum tea. My cats insisted on having their own tuna, and now they are curled up like little insects, sleeping in front of the fire place.

October, like the autumn, is a very powerful  place for ruminations. The weather gets cold, bears go into hibernation, and we look within. What I find is that I have internalized the idea of the Law of Entropy a tad to well. My house is not as clean as I would like it to be, and the only reason is that I can barely understand why I should clean it if it will just get messy again. My car too. Why should I dust the dash board if it will just be dusty in a week again anyway? While some of this mind frame is natural, some of it is just complacency.  Just because all things move from new and fresh to decay, life to death, is that a reason to let things fall apart? Knowing I will someday die...is that a reason to have an only half-lived life?

This conversation was so much more interesting inside my head. Oh well, at least now I have it written down so I can revisit it, I guess.