It’s 4am and I am feeling reflective.
Both of my parents went to graduate school. My dad went partially because the job market at the time was awful, but both of them had at least the ambition to go beyond a simple bachelor’s degree.
For some reason, their children seem to either lack that ambition or lack the will to achieve it. My brother once planned to become a doctor, but is now looking at teaching and coaching. My sister graduated last year and has no idea at all what she wants to do, but she hasn’t even mentioned graduate school as a possibility. I don’t seem to be able to put my head to the grindstone to finish my undergraduate degree, let alone any future graduate one.
I don’t think either of my siblings would be offended if I described myself as the most ambitious of the three of us, as well as the least focused. I’ve fucked around for a good portion of my adult life. I will probably be the last of us to graduate college. (I’m still not allowing myself to even consider the possibility of not finishing. I think that is part of the reason that I am still around Ames at all; I feel like leaving would put me one step farther away from graduating.) At the same time, I’ve had more life experiences than maybe most people ever have, at least until the midlife crisis - playing in a band, writing for a paper, being a radio DJ, appearing on and directing television, leading a statewide organization, road-tripping around the country, schmoozing with Presidential candidates, and so on. None of these things have really moved my life forward, though.
There are two abstract concepts that I know I really enjoy in life, and that I feel I should be the primary motivator for future decisions - rules systems and competition. I enjoy rules systems mainly for the sake of exploiting them, but that exploitation is much more fulfilling when it is done in some sort of adversarial process. Really all signs point to me being happy as a lawyer, and I pretty clearly have the intellect to be successful in the field. I am afraid that I still might lack the will, though.
I gambled and lost on this semester. I expected to decide on a candidate and work for them, or, failing that, to land a relatively relaxing job with the state party. I will be 29 at the time of the next caucus - an age at which political jobs become more like political careers - and I wanted to be in a position to really play a role in the process.
Instead I have been jerked around by the state party (who suggested on January 15th that I would probably be able to start as early as February 1st), and haven’t made up my mind on which candidate I want to support. I didn’t want to start school because I figured I would just end up quitting in February or March anyway, but it is now obvious that I made a mistake. I’m now in a position where I honestly don’t know what I should do next.
Do I want to get onto a campaign?
I don’t have strong enough feelings about the candidates to even pick who I would caucus for today. If I do that I am committing the next 11 months of my life to that cause and nothing else, which is not all that appealing to me.
Do I want to work for the party?
I have been really unimpressed with how they have handled the hiring process so far. I also don’t know if I would be able to quickly move up to tech director, which was part of the party’s initial pitch to me. I guess I am just leery of working for an organization that I don’t feel has been straight with me. This would also be a commitment of the next 11 months, although I would be able to have something of a life outside of it, and probably take down a few classes in the summer at least.
Do I want to go back to school in the summer?
This is starting to seem like a better and better idea every day. I still haven’t gone over the plan to see exactly how long it will take me to graduate (I am just anxious about it), but no matter how long it would take, this is something that, unlike the other two options, is something I must do to move on with my life. If I don’t have any other options that are compelling, then I should probably go with the most necessary one. And I think that I’ve developed a sufficient combination of self-discipline and embarrassment that I ought to be able to stay focused better than I ever have before.
I still don’t know where I stand, but option three wasn’t even registering for me two weeks ago. I need to reflect a little bit more on this (preferably during daylight hours) and make a decision soon.