Monday, June 19, 2006

 

About that...

Last week a shipment of books came to my office. It was a fairly large box, full of copies of one book...a biography of a guy who has been connected to the magazine. Bored, and looking for an excuse to procrastinate, I began leafing through the wonderfully fresh smelling pages. There were chapters for different parts of his life, such as...the undergrad years, meeting his wife, doing great stuff abroad, acting as a professor, etc etc.

I, of course, zoomed straight to the juicy stuff - the story of meeting his wife, and their courtship. They met at a party, and bonded over their shared love and admiration of Quakerism. He liked that she was "almost as tall and slender as he." No good love story is without heartbreak, so I was psyched to find a piece about him going off to WWII. I thought there would be some scandal when he returned, since Anne traveled to NYC to welcome him back, but the book was quick to say that she had gotten him a hotel room, and she crashed with a friend.

At any rate. All this leafing through someone's life made me wonder what the book of MY life is going to say. As of yet, it's rather unextraordinary. I mean, I've liked it, but it could be summed up in five pages. I obviously find enough to gab about on a fairly regular basis, but it's all crap and not important in the grand scheme of things. It's like...grew up in Massachusetts, went to an all-girls high school, moved to Washington to attend college, was editor in chief of her school paper, found love/had her heart broken (mentioned because the masses LOVE heartbreak!), is living in Maryland and works for a publisher.

There. A cursory description of my life. I'm not doing a lot of things justice, but still...

And this is an optimistic view, because I'm counting on filling tons of pages with scintillating stuff that some editorial assistant in the future will idly pick up, flip through, and then become fascinated by my successes, failures, and adventures.

I'm just so bewildered. Still trapped in the damn goo. What do I want to do with my life? I don't mind if it changes, if I decide that I want to be a stevedore on the docks of California, or a brilliant soapmaker in the flower-scented gardens of Japan, I just want to want something.

I want fire. I want to feel passion. I want to want something so badly that it drives me to do whatever it takes to get it. I need to do some soul-searching, which is always easier said than done. I need a plan.

Comments:
I mean, I've liked it, but it could be summed up in five pages

That is a great line!

It's common for young people to worry about the direction of their lives. Worry more if you're having these doubts in twenty years. Just be patient, good things will come.
 
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