Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Idealized future state

Much of my life has been built around a the search for meaning through the pursuit of an idealized future. If I can just get a little closer to that ideal, life will saturate with meaning and significance. This is yet another youthful defense against the burden of emotions and vulnerability. The right college will bring meaning, the right graduate school experience, the right career, becoming who my wife needs in order to fulfill all of her needs. It's been a constant effort to mold myself to what is deemed significant and meaningful. The answers will find me if I can just get to where they can find me. 

This blog is one giant trail of my relentless pursuit of that one elusive thing. The whole premise of the URL, a set of New Year's Resolutions is nothing but a program to obtain some vision of an idealized future. All the bad stuff that I'm feeling now will sublimate to nothingness as I get closer and closer to a smaller waist, check another Dickens book off of my to be read list, or get accepted to law school. My pursuit of other career opportunities. My obsession with The Edge. All this groping for some sense of what I'm about, what I should be doing, what I can do to finally feel accepted and fulfilled. 

It's a futile effort. I've made progress towards the career goals that I thought would bring deeper meaning and purpose to my life. Work will never be the principle source of meaning in my life. The gap between what I wanted from work and what it actually provides has been nothing but an inexhaustible source of frustration and disappointment. The truth is that I have it awfully good where I am now. It's comfortable, but that's not a bad thing. There is no mystical office out there that will vanquish all of my doubts and provide a clear route to a deep and meaningful career. It's a job. It doesn't have to be devoid of significance, but every day at work doesn't need to be a spiritual quest either.

No book will provide the answers for how to live my life or where I can find meaning and fulfillment in every moment of my life. Books can expand my life, make it richer and more complex, but the key to that something else that I've always sought will never reveal itself, no matter how difficult the book is to read. There is no something else. It's all right here. Everything I need is already in my life, but I've been to busy filling my emotional needs and keeping the potential of any bad feelings away by distracting myself with silly little stunts that offer the illusion of getting that much closer to the idealized future. 

I don't need to become somebody else for my wife to love me more or to fulfill her emotional needs. I just need to be me. That's all that she's ever wanted from me. She wants to feel valuable and important, that she matters, that she's desired and wanted and pursued. I feel all of those things for her. It's just a matter of sharing that with her, being in the moment with her, hearing everything she says, not just with her voice, but with her body, her gestures, her actions. The answers aren't out there waiting for me to find them. They're inside each of us, trying to find their way out, but we have to work together to coax them out. I'm getting better, we're getting better. It's not about the ideal. It's about us.


Tuesday, June 16, 2015

It's not that a goal is unattainable, it's just hard

I was all set to write a weepy post where I chided myself for not making much progress on goals that I've had since I stated writing this blog. (I was thinking about getting in shape and publishing a research paper in case you were curious what long term goals I had in mind.) This feeling was prompted by some old posts that I reread while looking for my reading list from the first years of writing this blog. The topics that I was writing about then are still issues that I think about and deal with today. Weight loss, fitness, reading and buying books, getting a better sense of who I am and what I'm about. Where is the progress, where is the accomplishment?

The frustration really amped up when I read some of my comments on writing a research paper. I'm still working on that same paper! Shouldn't I have finished that by now? I say these things are important to me, but my status doesn't seem to change. I had this whole internal narrative about the appeal of unattainable goals playing in my head. Just as my self-loathing was really starting to ramp up, I challenged myself to take a look at my supposed failures from a different perspective.

I challenged this idea that I'm all about unattainable goals? What if I just choose to pursue activities that require lots of hard work, but haven't put in the effort needed to perform at a desired level? Hard goals are hard for a reason. They require consistent effort. I may face set backs. I might have to start all over again on some of them. Activities may conflict from time to time. I can't pursue all of them with the same level of intensity for an extended period of time. Hard activities are not fun. They require focus and commitment and sacrifice. I have a busy life. It's a fantastic, wonderful life. I make sure that the people who matter most to me have as much of me as they need. Should I really beat myself up if I slip a little bit in my workouts or avoid working on a research paper?

That's when I realized what is really bothering me. I haven't finished anything in awhile. I've finished a few books, but I need to finish Toll the Hounds. It's a huge book. I've made it a point to get through that series this year. Finishing it will feel like progress in a way that getting through some other books just can't match. That damn manuscript has been hanging over me for years. I did finish the version that I mentioned in that early blog post. I submitted it to a journal and it was rejected. I took a look at my paper after that rejection and realized that it needed to be totally reworked. I am close to finishing that reworked draft. There is tremendous progress on that project, but it doesn't feel like I've made any progress because the work remains unpublished.

I'm also still figuring out how to capture a sense of progress and achievement as a manager. I record and note all kinds of activities because I relish the sense of getting something done. When I was working at the bench, getting something done meant testing some samples or completing an analysis. Now getting something done means keeping a project on track over the course of months. I'm also not the one doing the work. That dilutes the sense of something getting done. I need to find ways to make my team's accomplishments more real. That will go a long way towards making me more satisfied with my work life.