My Old Blog

I never considered myself stable enough to settle down. Now I think I was just never settled down enough to be stable.

I don’t really mean that I was ever un-stable…in the depressive, manic sort of way. I just always sort of admired the oppressive similarity of most people’s lives as something that I would not be able to bear….because I thought myself unable to hold up the routine, to be responsible to BE a certain way all the time.

That is my instability…a meandering internal state that does not allow me to commit to BEING anything on a schedule. I am famous for bouts of antisocialism, misanthropy, drunkeness, melancholy, lethargy, self-absorption and a bunch of other quasi-states of mind that I thought made it impossible for me to ever commit to anything longish term…….because in the short term I can hide/put off these moods….but eventually I get derailed and lose the will to get out of bed in the morning.

That is for me the rub of work and the rat race….always having to BE something. I don’t mind having to be someWHERE, or having to DO some things…even on a schedule. What I don’t like is having to BE a certain person when I am on this schedule.

When I am at work I have to be formal, polite, charming, insightful, and thorough. Let’s say after that I go catch a drink with some friends after work. Then I have to be friendly, funny, entertaining, and positive.

That’s pretty much your whole day. And lets face it…most of the time I feel a lot closer to disaffected, tired, cynical, and apathetic than to any of that other stuff.

I know I don’t have to have dinner with friends after work. I could sit at home by myself….but then I’d suddenly wonder why I’m at home by myself when I could be out somewhere doing something with someone.

So how am I fairing these days with all that? Pretty good actually. What I’ve found is that stability/normality is not something you ARE which then enables you to do other things (like hold down a job). Stability is something that is enabled by doing other things (like holding down a job).

Boring people do not have boring lives. Boring lives breed boring people. By participating in a life of routine, it evens me out more or less.

That being said, I remember a conversation a few years ago where I made the point that a great question to ask yourself when you make a big decision is: What kind of person will this make me become? Do I want to be that person?

Events shape us in ways that we cannot control. If I work in corpo-world everyday, I will eventually become them. If I hang out with deadbeat travelers all the time, I will eventually become that too. If I organize, follow-up and forecast at work….I will eventually start to do it in my private life too.

Anyway, I have to make a decision about some stuff in the next couple of weeks, and I was laughing at myself today because I was trying to predict what I would decide knowing me.

It is surprisingly hard.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2005 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.