It's nice that even though the material things in my life seem to be falling apart, the things of substance are coming together.
My new (since July/August) used car is destined for the great junkheap in the sky (the litany of what's wrong with "HELL CAR" would require its own entry, if not its own private island), my watch is broken, my cell phone stolen and needing replacement, I need to buy my first new pair of boots in two years, my paycheck isn't cutting it, and I think soon, unless I accomplish something dramatic, the costs of my job will start to outweigh its benefits, and it will be time to move on.
But this means a few things: I need to accomplish that dramatic thing I've been working on, I need to work some more OT (which seems plentiful at the moment, 'cause I know weakness in the system), and I need to have some assorted junk replaced.
More importantly (at least moreso than the junk) is the clarity I've gained. You get to a certain age and the time that you've spent really being you has got enough of a record where you can look at your life trajectory and see the big overarching patterns. And where smaller conscious decisions may have governed before, rather than allowing yourself to continue to be governed by them (which can cause you to lose focus, because you're a lover of life, and new things and new ideas, and one new passion overcomes another, old ones are cast aside with the intent to return -- the reality being that you likely won't), you can now set a path by history, and the connections between things that arose naturally out of your billions of little decisions.
You can see that the things you tend toward in your love of art echo what you love in music, echo what you love in your studies, echo what you want to evoke in your writing, and ultimately echo how you feel about your home town, and more generally how you feel about small-town America. You can see that the obstacles you have before you in how you want to develop are not unfamiliar, and were there in childhood, and with you in college, and here in adulthood, and realizing in part how simple breaking the pattern should be, dictates that there's no reason to wait, because you already know how the story goes if you allow the pattern to become you.
I've reached a point, I think, where it is becoming gradually easier to set a course for what I want because of where I've been. I don't know for sure if this is a first acquaintance with middle-age, or wisdom as opposed to smarts -- or both -- but I like it.
My new (since July/August) used car is destined for the great junkheap in the sky (the litany of what's wrong with "HELL CAR" would require its own entry, if not its own private island), my watch is broken, my cell phone stolen and needing replacement, I need to buy my first new pair of boots in two years, my paycheck isn't cutting it, and I think soon, unless I accomplish something dramatic, the costs of my job will start to outweigh its benefits, and it will be time to move on.
But this means a few things: I need to accomplish that dramatic thing I've been working on, I need to work some more OT (which seems plentiful at the moment, 'cause I know weakness in the system), and I need to have some assorted junk replaced.
More importantly (at least moreso than the junk) is the clarity I've gained. You get to a certain age and the time that you've spent really being you has got enough of a record where you can look at your life trajectory and see the big overarching patterns. And where smaller conscious decisions may have governed before, rather than allowing yourself to continue to be governed by them (which can cause you to lose focus, because you're a lover of life, and new things and new ideas, and one new passion overcomes another, old ones are cast aside with the intent to return -- the reality being that you likely won't), you can now set a path by history, and the connections between things that arose naturally out of your billions of little decisions.
You can see that the things you tend toward in your love of art echo what you love in music, echo what you love in your studies, echo what you want to evoke in your writing, and ultimately echo how you feel about your home town, and more generally how you feel about small-town America. You can see that the obstacles you have before you in how you want to develop are not unfamiliar, and were there in childhood, and with you in college, and here in adulthood, and realizing in part how simple breaking the pattern should be, dictates that there's no reason to wait, because you already know how the story goes if you allow the pattern to become you.
I've reached a point, I think, where it is becoming gradually easier to set a course for what I want because of where I've been. I don't know for sure if this is a first acquaintance with middle-age, or wisdom as opposed to smarts -- or both -- but I like it.
