I tend not to write when things are going well. Here's to changing the status of that quo.
Things are going well. For me. I feel these days I have to be specific. Our education system is shot, what had seemed like a sure thing for reforming health care seems to have died (in Massachusetts of all places - trust the assholes that already have health care to care the least about it), and more and more people around me are unemployed or scared to lose their jobs.
Things, for me, are going well. Sorry, everyone else. My heart is with you all. I just have less time to care now that I am not one among the legions of unemployed. Now that I'll be working 40 hours a week (plus overtime) for a livable wage, I'll think less of things unrelated to, well, myself. Or at least that seems to be the cycle.
I just reread my last entry (made several months ago). In it I included a list of jobs I would love to get. The one I got is not on that list. I am nonetheless elated because I can now pay for my school loans, apartment, food, travel (well, commute, but it sounds better listed as travel), maybe a date here and there, and possibly a beer once a month or so. Woo hoo!
In my head, as I'm writing this, my tone is as flat and dry as possible. I imagine some of that bled through. Regardless, in all seriousness and emotional honesty, I am excited to have a job. I am even excited about that job. I realize this blog is open to all that may wander across it and so I will abstain from the use of names and so on, but I will be working as a scientist of sorts. Yeah, it surprised me too. I am looking forward to learning something new here. And I am also kind of proud of how amazingly diverse my resume will be.
So, though I am still relatively poor compared to how I have lived in the past (e.g. I have enough to take my girl out to a nice dinner once, but it means I won't have enough for a metrocard that month), I am happy. I am less restless. And therein lies the next problem.
Throughout my life I have struggled with two states of being more than all of the others. I am either restless or restive. When I am comfortable, I am happy. And I produce nothing. I do nothing spectacular, or even extraordinary. When I am restless I imagine that I'm tough to be around. I'm either jumping out of my skin or exhausted and I can't get comfortable in any position. I am unhappy when I am restless, but I produce and create with voracity and excitement and from those things I derive satisfaction that rivals the happiness of comfort.
So now that I am up and in, as it were, I am terrified of complacency. I know I will settle into my routine and my immortal ambitions may be compromised. Which may be okay. Maybe I don't have to rule the world. Maybe I can be a really good dad. Or a really great guy to be around. Maybe I can be a great teacher. These things don't approach the only scale I care to think about at the moment - that is, global - but maybe a compromise of sorts is sane and will make me happy. And maybe happiness is all I can hope for.
Or, on the other hand, perhaps I should flee from happiness like a Batman movie done by Martin Scorsese. Maybe I can never truly settle and any happiness I ever achieve without some kind of satisfaction will feel empty and hollow until I attempt to avoid ever thinking about my ambitions and they become the things that haunt me at night like fear does children. I really don't mean to ever demean things like parenthood or teaching, but they seem to me like the things that most people do and that some (albeit not many) do well. I want to be remarkable. I want to stand apart. And though I suppose I could do that as a parent or a teacher, or even as a friend, I want more. I want scale. I don't care if I'm ever famous - don't get me too wrong here, I'm not made for the spotlight - but I would like to do something that changes the course of human history. Like inventors and philosophers have done for ages, I want to come up with that thing that takes humanity from where it is now and helps it to look back in a few years and say, "Damn, I can't believe I thought that was a good idea at the time."
I suppose. Regardless, I have a job. And a place. And I am comfortable, for the moment. What I need now is energy. I guess I need something to go wrong. Talk about tempting fate. Fuck.
