Back to School
- January 17th, 2010
- Posted in Linguistics
- By sycobuny
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I don’t care much about anything. Deliberately dispassionate reactions to the world have long divorced me from anything resembling a damn I could possibly give. Unfortunately, it didn’t do anything to relieve me of my regrets. Because, while I look forward into a dismal future of doing the same thing day in and day out, and can’t seem to muster up the essence of being – the will – to change my course, I look back and see every single missed opportunity and bemoan it.
It is no one’s fault but my own.
I had a discussion tonight with my partner Larry about school, to which I intend to return shortly. I explained that I’m going back to discover that in which I might still find interest, and specifically not going back because I have a topic which rocks my world; although, the major I’ve selected certainly does interest me. Essentially, I am going back deliberately for the “finding myself” period of college wherein a major is a priority, but not a fixed and immutable point. This was met with abject disdain: “But you’ll be wasting your time and your money.”
My response was abrupt and ended the conversation as abruptly: “I don’t care.”
And that pretty much sums it up. I’m going back, to a community college of all things, to start a program in foreign languages. I have a trajectory, – an arc, whatever – that I’d like to follow which ends with me enmeshing all I’ve learned into a patchwork career which could be both rewarding and interesting. Of course, it relies on a lot happening almost exactly as I imagine, but a shaky plan is quite literally infinitely more than the nothing I had before.
Because, you see, it’s hard to figure out what you want to do when you just can’t dredge up any passion for life. Once it’s been sucked out of you and the tiniest spark of inspiration is all that’s left, you just kind of have to roll with it. I can’t sit around and wait and think of what will light the proverbial burning fires in my soul; absolutely nothing ever will. There will no lightning bolt, descending from the heavens to strike me with great inspiration and insight. There is nothing but a growing gnawing darkness encircling my life since I left school, and no one’s interested in helping bring me back to the light.
Don’t get me wrong, school was a prickly place, full of self-centered braggarts who couldn’t be bothered with beings they considered lesser than themselves. However, since then I’ve just reduced the quality and quantity of those people, not their sentiments. At least in a place designed to foster creativity and intellectual pursuit, I could, you know, be creative and pursue intellectual activities.
So that’s it, I’m going to jump back into the pool. Maybe I’ll find out that foreign languages aren’t my cup of tea and I’ll have to switch up after testing the waters. Maybe it’ll be like waking up from a nightmare into a bright and shining new day. I don’t know, and I truly, honestly, don’t care anymore. Everyone tells me to be more decisive but rushes to make sure I second-guess myself at every turn.
I’m done second-guessing.
You’ve always had an interest in language. It’s not like it’s out-of-the-blue. If you stop to think about it you never had a choice when you were young: your mother long decided you were the music child, and your life was going to be 100% music. You’re just now figuring out that, while music is nice and all, you don’t want it to be your life. And you certainly don’t want to stay where you are anymore than I do.
We’re almost in the same position, except you have major advantages over me. You earn a lot more money than I do, and gives your more incentive to stay. You have a degree, and I have no education. I know exactly what I want to do, but it’s expensive to get there and not practical for my age and physical abilities. Being a medical doctor is a physical job, and I can’t fulfill the physical requirements given my disabilities. I don’t want to even acknowledge that I have a disability, but it’s quite painfully clear that I do, and no matter how much I don’t want it to, it’s going to continue to shape my life in a number of ways.
You have a house, a job you can stand, two people with degrees, and saved money. I have debt, no degree, and no way to get one. You’ve put Larry through school three or four times now (which was, if I may be blunt, a “waste of time and money,” and he didn’t care even when it wasn’t his money that was being wasted), it’s your turn. Take it, because I can’t.
I’m really happy to hear that you’re going back to school. Of course, all we know about each other is the online stuff, but I have certainly been where you are. In fact, I think I’m still there.
I’ve also had an affinity for languages, and was taking community college classes to learn Russian. You see, I was an exchange student to Russia when I was 13, but didn’t pick up much of the language then. It was one of those things where I slapped a “to be continued” on it, hoping to get back to it later.
Reading Rakaur’s comment, it sounds like you may have been put on a path that you didn’t necessarily choose. I can relate to that, as I’ve always felt that my mother was using me as her vicarious Take 2 at life. She pushed me into everything that sounded interesting to her. I can’t complain too much, as that resulted in Russia, and the Cornell degree. The problem, however, was that she kinda pulled the rug out from under me without warning. She told me that I could do whatever I wanted and she would support the decision, as long as I got my degree. At the time, I was young and foolish, so I thought I’d go off to the UK and be a pop star. Hell, if S Club 7 could do it, why couldn’t I. I never made any steps towards it, though, as she pretty much stopped supporting me emotionally once I graduated. She thought I’d be a good worker bee and get a job in the federal gov. My family comes from the old generation where the government is the end all, be all, and private industry is a joke. She wouldn’t care if I became a governmental janitor; I’d have a secure job, from which it would be almost impossible to be fired. I always saw that as “the easy way out”, so we’ve been at odds ever since. She loves me, but I don’t think she LIKES me. Losing that support kinda left me adrift, so I know how it feels to just sort of lose passion for things.
I’ve struggled to find passions, but then I find I fail at them. I loved comics, and got the chance to work in the industry, only to find that it wasn’t my calling.
Anyway, that’s probably enough Dr Phil from me! Just wanted you to know that you’re not alone, and I’m glad you’re taking them steps to do what makes you happy. I find it inspirational
I hadn’t known before about the Russian exchange program, except via the E-mail confirmations of my comments on your blog; the name suddenly makes so much more sense (I hadn’t seen the title anywhere on the current layout).
You’re right in that things seem very similar between us with regards to the schooling and career paths that we’ve followed. These days my mother doesn’t pressure me to do anything in particular, but she’s got a lot on her plate to deal with that doesn’t revolve around me (I’m the youngest of six children). I don’t believe she was living vicariously through me, as she was pointing me towards music, which was already her career as well; still, it was primarily her direction which led me to the education I chose. Though our actual careers and schooling were different, the impetus of them was quite similar.
It’s a shame that you didn’t find the comics industry as fulfilling as you thought you would, though I can imagine that, like video games, being a big fan of the industry is a far cry from being a part of it. It is good that you took the opportunity to try it, so many people see their interests sliding by them in life and don’t even give them the time of day for fear of losing their complacency; in essence, it’s that part of myself that I was primarily complaining about in this post.
But it’s good that you took a stand against easy security at the expense of finding something truly fulfilling. Some people would tell you that the idea of a job that you love is a myth and settling for safety is best, but I still am holding onto my idealism. The government provides probably the most stable jobs available, and comparable benefits to a good company, but many of those jobs are prone to suck the life out of you. I am just a contractor working for the government, and I can feel the will to escape and do greater things leaving me more with each day. It’s important not to fall into that trap.
The biggest hurdle for me is feeling passionate. I want to care about things related to my job, cause they’ll make it easier to work, but I just don’t. I think I should care more about politics, cause they affect the country and the world in which I have to live my life. It’s just hard to keep energy going when beset by cynicism, both from myself and from a myriad of external sources.
I’ll probably post an update on it, but my first run out the gate at school fell flat on its face pretty quickly, but I was definitely rushing into it without much planning. I’ve taken a step back and will be going after it again, with more thought behind it and thus an increased likelihood of success.