I just don't know what to do with myself
Nov. 22nd, 2009 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askygoneonfireI am so afraid of missing things. I live in terror of not having the time or capability to do all the things I want to.
I want to go to Cuba, before the Castro's die and communism collapses. I want to go to New York and see the Empire State Building. I want to drive across America. I want to go on an Arctic cruise. I want to learn to snowboard. I want to go back to New Zealand. I want to go back to Brazil and go to the Amazon. I want to go interrailing through the bits of Western Europe I haven't been to and go on to Eastern Europe. I want to go to Russia - St. Petersburg in particular. I want to see the Northern Lights.
PhD. Publish a paper. Read a lot more books. Have a library. Own a house. Tend my very own garden outside said house. Get a cat. And maybe a dog.
Right now I simply can't work out how I can possibly get from where I am now to There. I find it terribly easy to look backwards and see how clear the route was from where I was to There. At a very specific point, my life forked off the route I had planned out. My biggest question is whether this new road can ever merge with the old one again.
I come from a working class family who fought their way up to lower middle class. Right now I am living a working class life. I have the education of the middle class, the aspirations of the middle class and in theory, the required foundations to eventually become part of the upper middle class. I feel like I owe my parents much more than I am currently delivering, they worked hard so I could get a career, not job after job.
The biggest road block is me. And that is the most frustrating part in all of this. I need to pursue new professional avenues more aggressively but pursuing them aggressively goes against everything in my character. I think it would be easier to rail against my nature were the very next step in my working life one which placed me in the middle of a field I want to be in. As it is, I need to change job in order to accumulate enough money to return to university, even then I will only be back on the uncertain carousel that is higher education. I am reliably informed that the PhD job market is particularly uncertain at the moment so what was an easy to navigate road to a lifelong career is now strewn with potholes and traffic jams.
Increasingly, I'm tempted to settle for less; agree to build a relationship with a person I'm fairly confident isn't right for me, just so I can have a clear something in my life. She is offering me patience and warmth and security. She is offering me the hope for a successful relationship.
I can't get away from the fact I just don't want her. It's not just her, I don't want anyone. But I do want a home. And home means a relationship. Means love, warmth, companionship. So I'm back to the start, only following that logic, she is what I want.
I need to have some certainties, I need for at least one of the things in that list at the beginning of the entry to be in hand, to be guaranteed. I need to be able to sit down at night and say "yes, there's a lot of things wrong, there are a lot things up in the air, but this? See this, right here, this is sorted. Everything else can go to hell because I've got this one thing, and it's sure, it's sorted, it's permanent."
I'm impatient.
I want to go to Cuba, before the Castro's die and communism collapses. I want to go to New York and see the Empire State Building. I want to drive across America. I want to go on an Arctic cruise. I want to learn to snowboard. I want to go back to New Zealand. I want to go back to Brazil and go to the Amazon. I want to go interrailing through the bits of Western Europe I haven't been to and go on to Eastern Europe. I want to go to Russia - St. Petersburg in particular. I want to see the Northern Lights.
PhD. Publish a paper. Read a lot more books. Have a library. Own a house. Tend my very own garden outside said house. Get a cat. And maybe a dog.
Right now I simply can't work out how I can possibly get from where I am now to There. I find it terribly easy to look backwards and see how clear the route was from where I was to There. At a very specific point, my life forked off the route I had planned out. My biggest question is whether this new road can ever merge with the old one again.
I come from a working class family who fought their way up to lower middle class. Right now I am living a working class life. I have the education of the middle class, the aspirations of the middle class and in theory, the required foundations to eventually become part of the upper middle class. I feel like I owe my parents much more than I am currently delivering, they worked hard so I could get a career, not job after job.
The biggest road block is me. And that is the most frustrating part in all of this. I need to pursue new professional avenues more aggressively but pursuing them aggressively goes against everything in my character. I think it would be easier to rail against my nature were the very next step in my working life one which placed me in the middle of a field I want to be in. As it is, I need to change job in order to accumulate enough money to return to university, even then I will only be back on the uncertain carousel that is higher education. I am reliably informed that the PhD job market is particularly uncertain at the moment so what was an easy to navigate road to a lifelong career is now strewn with potholes and traffic jams.
Increasingly, I'm tempted to settle for less; agree to build a relationship with a person I'm fairly confident isn't right for me, just so I can have a clear something in my life. She is offering me patience and warmth and security. She is offering me the hope for a successful relationship.
I can't get away from the fact I just don't want her. It's not just her, I don't want anyone. But I do want a home. And home means a relationship. Means love, warmth, companionship. So I'm back to the start, only following that logic, she is what I want.
I need to have some certainties, I need for at least one of the things in that list at the beginning of the entry to be in hand, to be guaranteed. I need to be able to sit down at night and say "yes, there's a lot of things wrong, there are a lot things up in the air, but this? See this, right here, this is sorted. Everything else can go to hell because I've got this one thing, and it's sure, it's sorted, it's permanent."
I'm impatient.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-23 04:49 am (UTC)Also, could you not start saving up for, say, a week in New York? It's not cheap, but it's also not something that's so expensive that you couldn't save up for it by putting a little bit aside every week. Having a definite goal to work towards like that is always helpful.