we were meant to live for so much more

[editors's note: this was supposed to post last night, but there was a problem with blogger]


I need to stop reading books about characters confronting their destinies--they just make me unhappy, because then I start panicking when I think about my own situation and the fact that life doesn't wait for you to figure out what to do with it. I actually like what I do at work, and find it interesting, and have every reason to be perfectly satisfied with it, and I accomplish a lot and am making serious progress with my career, etc. But, I have this lurking sense that I should be doing something else, that my fate (or my overactive ego/subconscious/whatever) demands a different path...and so when I'm reminded of that (such as when I read a book about confronting destiny), I suddenly become achingly unhappy with the pain of wanting something that I cannot quantify or name.

The longing to do something else is sometimes unbearably strong--like the strange urges I get to chop off all my hair, or move to a foreign country, or drive too fast through the foothills. All of my moves in the past year and a half have been triggered by this desire to do something wildly different from what I'm currently doing; yet in all cases, it was just a substitute for doing something that would actually get me closer to my destiny. It's like I keep choosing things that seem like what I should do (because they're hard/challenging) rather than what would be easy to do (because it may be my destiny). I don't know why I'm avoiding it almost as hard as I'm trying to embrace it, but I always avoid what feels right in favor of what feels difficult. I played the flute and piano growing up, even though my mouth was exactly the wrong shape for flute and my hands were too small to progress to octave playing; I chose SymSys for all the wrong reasons; I work in a field that I've never really felt passion for; and to be honest, even though I've never said it before, I think I would have liked Boston better and sometimes wish that I had gone to Harvard instead, even though I've loved Stanford and don't regret coming here.

Anyway, this won't be resolved tonight, and the regret that is clawing at my heart will eventually subside again into a dull throbbing that barely reminds me of its presence while I go about my successful daily life. Sleep will help; I always feel a bit ragged after a couple of days of early conference calls and late meetings, and so tomorrow should be better. I also have my first creative writing class tomorrow, and by the time I get home, Tammy will be here to stay with me for a week--and so life will be too fun for regrets. Yay.