Self-reference

Its funny to have to think more now about future employers reading this stuff. Funny because it makes it harder for me to just come out and say thing I want to say, like how I woke up this morning and I felt like I was choking, choking on life. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit in my room all day, cut off from the world. I need to find some way to connect, but I just don’t know how.

I was talking with someone on the phone last night and he told me that last summer was one of the happiest times of his life. He was uncommitted and unattached, not yet having to worry about a career or life direction, able to spend time with family and with friends, to go places, to just have fun.

I agreed with him. Last summer was pretty amazing. And its not that every waking moment was amazing — there was a lot of boredom, even some sadness. But I had a job doing interesting things with interesting people. I had wonderful weekends doing fun things with fun people in a fun place. I had time to think and read and play on my computer, but not too much time. I had time to myself, but also time with others. And last summer was also the start to an amazing relationship.

In the waning days of summer I wrote a recap that described what I had learned about the world an myself. At the time, I wrote:

I’ve learned that I’m afraid of what comes after college, of the mundanity of real life. I don’t enjoy working eight hours a day at doing the same thing, I don’t enjoy office politics and meetings that don’t accomplish anything and doing things that aren’t interesting and new. Most of all, I don’t enjoy the prospect of not being around friends all the time, not in a place where I can just go knock on a door or send an IM and meet someone for dinner. Of being out somewhere in the wide world, disconnected from everyone I’ve met and known over these past three years, seperated by geography and life circumstance and the demands of work, and the limitations of time and money.

I think that was pretty spot on, and I don’t think my feelings have much changed. Unfortunately, I also don’t think there is much I can do about it.

I’ve learned that optimism is better then pessimism, but sometimes pessimism can be hard to shake.

I’m in a rut. When I get a job, that will be a major step towards getting out of it. But current life events do cause me to question some of my base assumptions, like what I’m still doing on this coast, what I’m doing in the Cambridge/Somervile area, and what my future holds. This isn’t an easy journey. But I guess no one said leaving college would be easy.

Change is unending, change is inevitable, change must be embraced, for change is the basis for life. If only change wasn’t so damn hard.