Jumbled
Life, as of late, just seems to have worked her way into a big tangled mess. (I know, like really, really tangled.) I wish it were as simple as ironing out the wrinkles in your skirt or unknotting your pesky earphones, but the problem is: there's no solution.
There's no road map or timeline or even deadline, which makes it so all the more confusing.
While I look at other people, admiring how they have their lives all neat and organized and sparkling clean with their houses and their families and their dependable salaries, I have to realize that maybe there are other people looking in on my life, wistfully wondering what it would be like to have my freedom or independence.
I want someone to tell me what to do with my future...but only if I want to do what they're suggesting.
"So, why don't you figure out what you want to do, ya big sillyhead?" you might ask.
Ummm...because I don't know?
Is it the plague of my generation, that sense of entitlement, that drives me?
Or is it ultimately a quest to discover the greatest of all motivators: passion?
It's hard for me honestly, especially in the spheres in which I circulate, when I'm getting to know people and they ask where I'm working or what brought me to the area. Do I give them my entire backstory? Do I explain to them why I'm currently doing/not doing what I am and the pros and cons that went into that decision-making? Do we talk about contentment and fulfillment? Again, do we talk about passion?
Sometimes it just feels like there's too much of me and I have too many ideas and interests to be pigeon-holed into simply one identifier, one word, one job. Yes, I studied European History and I will always be a francophile pastry chef harpist writer musician, but what does that have to do with private investigating??
I DON'T KNOW.
I don't know why anything is what it is, especially when so little of it makes any discernible sense. I don't know what the point of any of this is either, if I'm supposed to learn a lesson from it all, and if once I learn that lesson, everything will fall into place. Except that I can already warrant a guess that it. will. not.
So I feel better to know that there are other people in this canoe right along with me.
I feel better when I come across girls who studied at Julliard and then moved to a farm in North Dakota to raise chickens and bake mini cakes with their farmer boyfriends. Just because you do one thing doesn't mean that one thing has to be the only thing you do.
I feel better when I experience art, especially that art whose beauty lies in the transience of its creation.
And, duh, of course I feel better when I can get my naan on with some ridiculously spicy Indian food.
Even though I don't have a Urim and Thummim for this silly pre-quarter-life-crisis, at least there's
Alfred Hitchcock and
lamb curry and
cheesecake, right?
There's no road map or timeline or even deadline, which makes it so all the more confusing.
While I look at other people, admiring how they have their lives all neat and organized and sparkling clean with their houses and their families and their dependable salaries, I have to realize that maybe there are other people looking in on my life, wistfully wondering what it would be like to have my freedom or independence.
I want someone to tell me what to do with my future...but only if I want to do what they're suggesting.
"So, why don't you figure out what you want to do, ya big sillyhead?" you might ask.
Ummm...because I don't know?
Is it the plague of my generation, that sense of entitlement, that drives me?
Or is it ultimately a quest to discover the greatest of all motivators: passion?
It's hard for me honestly, especially in the spheres in which I circulate, when I'm getting to know people and they ask where I'm working or what brought me to the area. Do I give them my entire backstory? Do I explain to them why I'm currently doing/not doing what I am and the pros and cons that went into that decision-making? Do we talk about contentment and fulfillment? Again, do we talk about passion?
Sometimes it just feels like there's too much of me and I have too many ideas and interests to be pigeon-holed into simply one identifier, one word, one job. Yes, I studied European History and I will always be a francophile pastry chef harpist writer musician, but what does that have to do with private investigating??
I DON'T KNOW.
I don't know why anything is what it is, especially when so little of it makes any discernible sense. I don't know what the point of any of this is either, if I'm supposed to learn a lesson from it all, and if once I learn that lesson, everything will fall into place. Except that I can already warrant a guess that it. will. not.
So I feel better to know that there are other people in this canoe right along with me.
I feel better when I come across girls who studied at Julliard and then moved to a farm in North Dakota to raise chickens and bake mini cakes with their farmer boyfriends. Just because you do one thing doesn't mean that one thing has to be the only thing you do.
I feel better when I experience art, especially that art whose beauty lies in the transience of its creation.
And, duh, of course I feel better when I can get my naan on with some ridiculously spicy Indian food.
Even though I don't have a Urim and Thummim for this silly pre-quarter-life-crisis, at least there's
Alfred Hitchcock and
lamb curry and
cheesecake, right?
This is Emily. Oh Katherine, you big silly head. Nobody's life is perfect and organized. A lot of times when it seems like that from the outside, it's completely opposite from the inside. I do envy your independence sometimes. Like you can go to Target BY YOURSELF and just walk around forever! You can go to a movie or to a restaurant and not have to be like, well we're going to have to get and pay a babysitter, so . . . nevermind. I can't even tell you how different my life turned out than what I thought it would be. I thought I would be married to Nathan Stone by now! ha! I'll tell you what you should do, move to PA and come hang out with me every evening! Once Brandon starts work I'll be ever so lonely and you should be here just to make sure I don't throw my kids across the room or something. Cause it feels like that some days, okay most days.
ReplyDeleteMy two cents......it's just part of growing up to realize that what people do is not who they are. I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. There's too many interesting things to do to pick one. It took me a long time to realize that WHO I am was taught to me in a Primary song a long time ago. Then I could quit trying to figure out who I am and do what I like to do without concern about the impression it gave of me on other people. Once you can really digest the idea that "I am a child of God" is it, that's who I am, end of story, then you can stop trying to fill in the "I am ________." When you try to fill in, "I am a child of God, and I do _________________," you will find it to be much more freeing because what you do does not define who you are.
ReplyDeleteI would like to quote a dialogue between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland":
ReplyDelete"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.