Panic! At the Opera

Has anyone ever actually had a dream where they show up at school naked? I’ve heard reference to such dreams in sitcoms. It seems to be a stereotypical anxiety dream. Lucky for me I’ve never had this dream. I express my anxiety in dream state with far more grandeur.

In order to shake up my life a bit and end this insane spell of ennui that’s been plaguing me, I’ve gone on a rampage of changes. New job, new condo, returning to school. I haven’t been feeling any of it until I got the new job. The reality of leaving behind so many people I like is breaking my heart.

I know this because last night I had what I can only assume is my equivalent of the naked dream. I’m at the Opera. Actually, I’m starring in the Opera. It’s a german Opera, I’m some kind of female lead and my part is coming up, only I don’t know the words…. What will I do??

Well, the first thing I do is panic. Then my genius creative mind kicks into gear and I start dancing around like a lunatic all over the place until the audience just gets bored and leaves.

I’m trying to figure out what this is saying to me and all I can come up with is that in times of trouble, I should just look like I’m getting the job done and everyone will assume it is being done and look away.

Though next time, I might just get naked.

Addicted to Change

I know this is going to sound stupidly obvious to anyone who as ever read my blog or talked to me at all about my boredom, but this is totally new to me.

1999: I start university
2001: I move out of my parents’ house
2002: I enter into my current long-term relationship
2003: I graduate university
2004-2007: I hold a few jobs and move a few times. . .

See what I’m getting at here? After years of upheaval and change, I’ve had 3 years of basically normal life. I’m clearly not ready for normal life.

Even when I was growing up living with my parents, there were constant changes that redefined our lives (moving, having kids, having step kids move in with us, businesses, careers, etc). Most of what I was doing with my life has been geared towards avoiding these upheavals.
Seems I’ve got two choices, change everything (which is my usual inclination) or admit that this is actually what I want – which is true.

I’m going to hold off deciding. But at least I know what I’m about now (even if all of you already did.)

A Special Kind of Hell

The other day I was listening to a podcast of Ideas from CBC. The speaker they had on was talking about personal worth. According to him the current globalization of the world is leading to a worse state of personal worth. Apparently, so he says, in the past our worth was materially based, and so if we wanted to be worth more to our community, theoretically we could work harder and make ourselves better. However, now we’re moving towards a celebrity culture. We all want to be stars, but we all can’t be stars and for most of us no matter how hard we work, we never will be stars, and this is a bigger hurt to us than what people have experienced before (with feudalism and plagues and abject poverty.)

I was recently reading Robertson Davies’ “The Cunning Man” and he was talking about a character who was quite skilled at her art – but not so skilled as to be “talented.” He called this characters’ doomed life constantly striving for recognition even though she would never get it as “a special kind of hell.”

I’m not sure I agree with either of these assesments of human limitation, but I do agree that the pleasure is not in the striving, it is in the hoping. Where there is striving with no hope, there is just pain.

Stupid Poetry – Making Things Sound Easy

. . .
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost

Ok, so Robert Frost had two roads, and he picked the one less travelled by, fair enough. But what would he have done if there were 6 roads or 8? What if all the roads had varying levels of wornness, and indeterminate outcomes? What if the well worn road lead in the exact right direction, but was stony and craggly, while the not so well worn road was flat but led in the exact opposite direction you were planning on heading??

I’m just ranting because people often quote this poem when talking about the “well-lived life” but WTF! No one’s decisions are that cut and dry! There are a thousand miniscule details that make decisions hard to make.

So here’s the thing people. I’m pretty sure running websites isn’t the career path I want to spend the rest of my life on. I’m not so much unhappy as unfulfilled. And this is what I’m thinking my choices are: 1) Go back to school and get my MBA 2) Find a completely different job 3) quit my job and be a do-nothing, lazy-ass loser leaching off Marc as payback for his slow-start financially at the beginning of our relationship (you didn’t think it would come back to haunt you, did you?)

So yeah, that’s as simple as I can make it. Maybe I should just roll a d6 and do what it tells me, that answer will be as good as any I could make. 1-2 =1, 3-4=2, 5-6=3.

Ok! Marc witnessed without knowing and it was a 6! Yay! Loaferdom here I come.