I’ve spent the past week getting my arms shot full of Terminator juice, even one such to protect from a mysterious illness known as “typhoid”, because apparently where I’m planning to go next month, everything wants to kill you.
Several years ago, I went moonlight snowshoeing in single digit temps with two of my friends. As we were out there, I said, “We’re crazy”, to which one friend replied, “No, we’re adventurous!” I feel like that applies now. This all could actually happen. It all could actually work. I’m scared.
But somewhere in the midst of exiting the corporate world and spending my days logging in to annoying websites to perform administrative crap, I’ve realized that the stress and anger haven’t gone away. The frustration and occasional exasperation are still around every corner. What does that mean? What does it mean when you’re still angry and dissatisfied, and easily provoked?
Last year I was gung-ho about scanning antique mining catalogs. Today, I remember that I could light them all on fire and be none the worse off.
Priorities change. Interests change.
I am a raft on the ocean, above me a bright, beautiful sky, but I can’t reach it.
What does it mean when you love learning, but you’re too impatient to read some days? What does it mean when you want to understand all of the deep things that interest you, but you can’t think of any practical value to that knowledge? What does it mean when pastors tell you to figure your calling out, but though everything inside of you has found so many things exciting, you encounter only dead-ends and indirection?
I am the shadow of a raindrop on the wall. I trickle into the depths and am soon born again.
What does it mean when one month, two months pass and you still don’t miss your job? What does it mean when, although you’ve always said you enjoy CRUD applications, you remember that pretty much every day at work was boring?
I am a man of obscure languages. I enjoy the history of things.
And none of it adds up, NONE OF IT! Swipe the books off my desk, tip it over, throw it into the wall, because fuck you, wall! You don’t make any sense! I’m supposed to have a purpose, damn you! I’m supposed to BE somebody!
I am the memory of warm and friendly cats. They put me at ease.
And that’s it. I was supposed to be somebody. I was supposed to have something figured out. But somewhere deep inside, I’m grieving, and I don’t know why. I think I’ve been grieving for a long time.
I don’t want to scan these books anymore, I want to be done with this. I don’t want these projects. I just want to let them all melt away on a flight to far, far away. I want to smell dew in the morning, and rain. To drink coffee from shops that face strange and unseen angles of the world. But why the drive to learn, if God won’t tell me what the hell it’s for?
Just hit the slopes, hit the slopes, keep training. Less projects, more slopes, keep breathing. And breathing.