Old Song New

Ever hear an old song as if you're hearing it for the first time? It just happened to me with John Mayer's "Why Georgia." I had my iPod going on random, and it came up. The music was just for background, as I was doing other things, but all of a sudden, the lyrics came to the forefront of my consciousness and it hit me clearer than ever what the song was about. I always understood the lyrics before, but now I understand the people for and about whom those lyrics were written.

For the past six months, I've been playing at figuring out what to do with the rest of my life. I had fooled myself into thinking I had figured out my options, and just had to choose. I rationalized the time off as some much-needed, possibly even deserved, time to reconnect with friends, spend precious time with family and help out those close to me in need of help. I also pretended to know what I wanted to do next - I would either go in-house or "start over" in patent prosecution, with my pipe dreams of teaching or getting my Ph.D. in English Lit in tact as pipe dreams. God forbid I have no idea of what to do next!

I realized this week that it has taken me six months just to get ready to really think about the question. In that time, I applied to four job openings, only because they were the best of what was available in the legal field, but not really because I wanted any of them. Only one of those companies called me, and in talking to them, I realized I only knew what I didn't want, and not what I did want. Also in that time, I picked up Po Bronson's "What Should I Do With My Life" three times without getting past the introduction.

I've been waiting for an epiphany, or for fate to intervene and push me in one direction or another. Nothing so far. As I've learned from Bronson's book, this is common. I suppose it is appropriate that traumatic events leave you only with shell shock, recoil, an instinctive knowledge of what you don't want. They don't inform on what you do want. I always thought if you could figure out what you didn't want, by process of elimination you could figure out what you did want. I'll admit the latter question is much more difficult and real than I've previously given it credit for.

For someone who has always known what the next ten steps were, I've been surprisingly adrift. I wouldn't say I'm lost. I know where I am in life, what my priorities are, and I've figured out the important part of my life - the personal/social, family/friends part. I'm happy. In fact, having a stable and full personal life delays my need to find my next (true?) professional purpose, because it's almost enough. In fact, I thought for a brief while that I could do nothing (professionally) for the rest of my life. But all my friends and family know, and now I do, too, that I can't go on doing nothing, even if it is financially possible, for the same reason(s) that I stuck out two years of bioengineering even though I had no desire to be an engineer; that even after figuring out I wasn't cut out for engineering, I wouldn't graduate college without a science degree; and that I wouldn't go into any ordinary field of law - it had to be one where you had the added technical layer. I don't consciously know what all those reasons are, but I know one is that I am haunted by my potential. It nags me to make the most of it.

Figuring out how best to make the most of my potential was easier in high school. It's harder now that I've gone through what seems an entire cycle of "What Should I Do With My Life," and am trying to figure out the next volume, "What Should I Do Next With My Life." Last weekend, I found I was finally ready to read Bronson's book, a collection of stories about people, including himself, that have asked themselves the same question. If his book has shown me anything, it's that everyone finds their way differently. Although he tries valiantly to categorize the stories somehow (he says he's always been good at math, so I imagine his left brain just wouldn't let him put these stories down in random order), his organization seems a little forced to me. As he admits, most of the stories fit in many, if not all, of the chapters.

And then I hear, "Am I living it right? ... It might be a quarter life crisis or just the stirring in my soul ... Either way, I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life ... Don't believe me when I say I've got it down," and I get it, I get the song. I used to dismiss such musings as belonging to lazy, unmotivated, spoiled people wanting an excuse to delay work or thinking they deserved better than what is out there for them. Now I'm one of them. It's uncomfortable, hence the rationalizations and false plans described above. But now that I know, I can get down to trying things out and seeing if they stick.