Being away from the internet this whole weekend made me realize that I do far more productive things with my life when I'm not blogging or randomly surfing the net or bloviating about my favorite 20th century composition, etc. on Facebook's discussion groups. I always think I am an internet junkie (aren't we all? Those of us who read/write blogs and do FB), but when I was away from it, I did not miss it one bit.
Thus, much as I love this anonymous introspective rambling thing too much to give it up, I think I might either need to reduce the frequency of my so-called introspective babble or be off of this for a while, so I can focus on more important things.
One of the things attending this wedding made me realize is that 1. my life has not changed much (jobs, etc) for the past several years. In other words, I've been stagnant and resisting the steps required for change and self-improvement. Also, 2. I feel "behind"—so behind with many aspects of my life. Unlike the authors of many blogs I read or my fellow ensemble members, I cannot seem to strike a good balance in my life or sort out my priorities (e.g. blogging vs. reading Tolstoy. Balancing work, life, sensible living, and relationships, etc.)
At the end of the day, 5 people might read my blog and maybe one might like what they read, but I probably should be reading more Tolstoy (metaphorically speaking), and writing less Dear-Ann-Landers-esque blogs.
Or better yet, figuring out how I'm going to add value to this world. I think at this point, it's too late to emulate Mozart and write that epoch-making symphony. (Or hell, 104 of them, if you're Haydn.) I console myself with the thought that we can't all be Mozarts or Haydns, right? Some of us need to be menial office workers, right? (Humph. Hardly a consolation.)
That pesky “what to do with my life” question that perpetually overhangs and haunts. I wish I had an answer, really. This can mean many things—relationships, figuring out future plans, my career.
There are the more discrete, more tangible ways one can self-explore. Choir has been part of this. Exploring classical music has been part of this. Pursuing various hobbies, meeting new people, trying new things, and heck, blogging—all of these activities have been a part of this, as has traveling.
But I’m starting to wonder whether these smaller “self-exploration” missions are actually part of my long-term self-exploration project, or whether it’s actually a ploy to keep myself incredibly busy so as to evade the larger self-exploration process that I probably should’ve done in my 20s and I really need to do.
All of these aforementioned activities keep me happy and make me more whole as a person, and thus I continue to do them.
However, as the fourth decade of my life quickly passes by (faster than I would like), I wonder: would I be happy in my current state of affairs—sans career, sans any major accomplishments, and living in a tiny box sans couch or TV—at 40? Once upon a time, I thought this way about turning 30, but now, 30 seems so young, and 40 seems, well, closer and closer. (And already there, if anyone at work is reading this.)
Perhaps it’s futile and flattery to compare myself to Mozart—so I’m not going to do that, but even as I know full well that most of us are no Mozarts, I keep having a Mozart-induced mid-life crisis as I get closer to the age of his death. By a mere 35 or 36 years of age, he had done so much with his life. Why can’t I accomplish a mere fraction of what he had produced in his lifetime?
Which brings me back to the Big Life Question.
It’s not that I’m expecting to figure out the never-ending puzzle which is life by not blogging. Nor do I necessarily believe that my friends who have figured out their career, started families and own a house have “figured out” their life. These are but the external trappings of the more intangible never-ending life quest.
But they have the sort of stability that I sometimes envy.
Sometimes it’s nice to still be in the exploratory “transient” stage. Particularly, as an INFP, I like open-ended possibilities and often don’t like definition. But there is this sort of societal expectation, that you need to be “established” (whatever that means) by a certain age.
For women, part of this unfortunately ties in with our damn biological clock. For example, if I decide that I want to have kids, there is a time limit for pursuing this. (It also requires, well, other forces of biology, which in turn requires all sorts of other efforts, rituals, courtship, etc.) I don’t want to spend my entire life obsessing about whether or not this will happen, so I haven’t been, nor have I decided one way or another (or at least not to the extent that I want to admit openly on a public blog, though I think the truth is that we are programmed in some way that many of us do want to perpetuate our lifeline somehow), but the point is that I haven’t excluded the possibility and thus, like it or not, this does somewhat overhang as I think about The Next Few Years Ahead Before I Reach The Age That Mozart Died.
Do you see how I love this introspective babble? I don’t even know if I’m making the slightest bit of sense or if anyone reads my anonymous nonlinear internet-induced mind babble. It is cathartic though, to write thus and imagine an attentive audience to whom this might make any sense or have any meaning, so I appreciate your letting me indulge.
On that note, however, I may need to go into blog-estivation mode for a while. I haven’t decided, since that is the epitome of being a P (of the Myers-Briggs kind).
I need to cut down on my potential distractions as I mull over things, sort out my priorities and catch up on the myriad of things that I am so behind in.
Or maybe I'll be back sooner than I think. . ..
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