(no subject)

I'm creeping up on the idea that I can open doors easily that others often have to carefully prepare to be able to do, but I'm not sure what it means, or if it means anything.

Also maybe that my default is a kind of 'open door policy', or at least ajar. Closing takes a lot more energy; it's usually easier to just block entry or force ejection.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm actually doing with my life.

master of none?

I spoke to my insight provider today, with the ostensible focus on the public vs enforced not-public (as opposed to private, which she wanted to define as originating from the individual) aspects of my life, or that I experience. This seems very important ground; I think this is where a lot of my alienation comes from, on a lot of fronts.

As is often the case, though, we'd loop out from that subject to others, then meander back. One of the areas touched upon was the idea of specialization. She said, 'Looking at you, I can see lots of things you could have been successfully, but you chose not to, and I wonder what that choice means.' (This arose out of the feeling that I'm not doing anything other than drifting, that I can do lots of thins, and occasionally do, but that it's not often or consistent, and rarely towards my own goals (other than maybe satisfying my curiosity)) I think, after not knowing how to actually work or study, that might have been my problem with graduate school; I couldn't, or wouldn't, pick an area, theme or sometimes even topic. I wanted to sample widely, and both resisted and resented the idea that I shouldn't.

This is the kind of thing that makes me suspect that if I were ten years younger I would have been treated for ADD. I don't think I am, but I just get bored with only doing one thing after a while. I'm not sure I see that as something that I need to manage chemically, for me.

So, I drift. It's what I do in terms of work, and kind of what I do in terms of what I'll read, what my areas of interest are at a given time. On the former front, I'm good at my job, possibly really good, but I don't really care about it; it's not important, and I feel a twinge of guilt about that, because it pays pretty well (especially considering my lack of investment), doesn't totally suck, etc. People rely on me there, but ultimately, I feel like I could be doing pretty much anything; I get by because it's easy for me.

I used to worry that I was overly enamoured with the idea of potential as potential, and wouldn't solidify any potentiality so as to keep it, but I don't really think that's it any more. I'm starting to think that it's because I'm not so caught up in an area of study, in it's strictures and structures to focus and produce within a discipline or area, that I can roam pretty widely, pick up what I want, and play with how it fits together. But if that's truly my goal, why am I so unsatisfied? Why do I feel like I'm letting myself lie fallow, and to what end? What am I doing with my life?