Bionic Teutonic

I’ve been thinking about being an adult lately. I really have no idea what it means to be an adult. I’ve rejected the notion most of my life simply because I’ve associated it with losing your childhood sense of wonder and playfulness, which I never want to happen. But then again, I find myself pretending to be adult-like in much of my life out of simple necessity, and not all of that is bad. Having a job, owning my own house, not being overly prone to drama, etc. I just haven’t fully figured out how to separate the good from the bad consistently and in a way where I still embody the kid in me and the adult I am somehow becoming. Yesterday I was at lunch looking around at all the people scurrying to and from work, having adult-like conversations and doing adult-like things and thinking that each one of these people is really just a large kid behaving as if they were an adult. It’s like the muppet babies but in reverse. The hypothetical in that show was always “what if the muppets were all babies?” whereas in real life the hypothetical is “what if all these kids were adults?” The strange thing is that when I thought about the people I was watching in that way, it made me feel quite connected to them somehow. Like we are all just doing our best at this adulthood thing. I just hope that each one of them has found a place where they can toss off all their clothing and run through the sprinkle

I love airplanes. Which is odd, given that I have been, at times, totally freaked out about flying. But I love them anyway. I see them pass over Seattle and I feel a little yearning every time. I mostly yearn for the adventure they represent. Whenever you board a plane, you are being carried away from your routine, and your normal patterns of daily movement. I have strong memories of when I was a little kid, getting up way before dawn for transatlantic flights. I don’t think I was always happy about being up that early as a kid, but I was always aware that it meant an upcoming adventure and over the years, I’ve become very attached to the feeling of early morning or middle of the night flights. On our trip to Bali, our flight was after midnight, so we were at the airport super late and I loved being there, knowing that we would soon be on our way to a new place I’d never been. If I could live in that sense of anticipation, fully soaked in it, I think I would be a very happy man. Somehow, you are more aware of everything when you are in the middle of travelling than you are during your normal life (or at least I fell like I am).* I have two overseas trips I’m planning right now and half of what I’m excited about is simply being able to experience travelling.

* I’ve thought about this and realize that much of this is simply ones own outlook. I feel like there should be a way to maintain that same sense of awareness, of soaking in all the things around you, but I have yet to find it. Somehow the routine of it all just kind of dulls your senses. It gets put into perspective at times when friends from out of town will notice things I’ve walked past a million times but have never mentally taken note of.

On another topic, I’ve finished school, which feels great, but am also feeling like I’m at a bit of a crossroads. One of my classmates mentioned that he was taking the class for the second time as nursing school requires that you have taken it within a certain time-frame. Which sort of hit it home for me that I have to figure out pretty soon which career choice I am actually going to take. I have several different paths that I could see myself heading down at the moment and I don’t feel like I know enough about any of them to make a real informed and responsible decision (in the sense of doing the right thing for my happiness and fulfillment). I don’t want to rush into something just to maintain some sort of forward momentum and end up feeling miserable and unfulfilled in several years, yet I could also easily be paralyzed by indecision and somehow let the work I’ve put in so far expire. I think I’m need to be using some of this new found free time to mull it all over, do some job shadowing perhaps, and explore my choices more. You know, figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

I was in a meeting yesterday where I looked around and realized that every single one of the 12 or so people in the meeting had wedding rings on. This was odd to me, because while I have a clear sense that work and real life are different things, during the time I am at work, these are my peers. Now, in real life, I am one of the few people I know who is married. The vast majority of people I hang out with aren’t. It was a strange moment, because in some ways it made clear to me just how different my work environment is from the life I have chosen for myself outside of it. It’s kind of like the feeling I get every election, when Republicans win and I think “where the hell are these people?” Nobody I know votes republican (or at least that they will admit), but obviously they get half the votes in this country, which makes me feel very disconnected somehow. Like the reality I live in is somehow very much not indicitive of anything except the reality I live in. I suppose that in one way, it’s a blessing that work provides a place where you come across a different set of people than you might normally be around. We self-select the people around us so much that we can forget that people different from us exist sometimes. This is an odd thought to have begun in a meeting where everybody was married just like me, but there you have it.

Happy New Years! As somebody on the radio said today, it’s a perfect time for getting a gym membership you will never use:) I will admit that I’ve gone through the exercise of making a few new years resolutions and am trying to enact a few changes, which feels a little bit cliched, but whatever. My yoga teacher had a great thought she imparted the other day that I’m trying to incorporate into my resolutions, which is that the new year always seems to be this time when people decide they are going to be different than they were last year. Somehow, we seem to focus on the things we are doing that we want to change and the ways in which we are not adequate. Our teacher had us actually write out some things that we felt were already good qualities we had or that other people tell us we have and then suggested that we focus on just doing more of that. The yoga center I go to does a lot of work with kids that have disabilities (autism, physical disability, etc), and one of the core tenets is that you build on what’s already there. As my teacher said, it’s the idea that we are already all the things we want to be. We each have anger and peace, patience and impatience, etc and if we focus on giving support to those good qualities we already have, the rest of it sort of falls into place. I really like that thought. Does that make me a hippy?

I’ve been feeling very unmotivated lately, and it’s kind of getting me down. I feel like I spend a lot of time doing nothing. A big part of this is work, which I’ve been finding to be a little unchallenging lately. The side-effect is simple inertia. My body at rest at work tends to result in my body being at rest on my own time and I’m left feeling a little unfulfilled and listless. I feel like I need to make some changes so that I’m excited about the things I do in my life on a daily basis, but I’m struggling a bit with exactly what those changes need to be. I feel like I’m skating by a bit, not making nearly enough music, not taking care of my body enough, not making much progress on my debt, not doing enough projects that I find fulfilling. The hard part about getting excited about the things you are doing is that you have to put the energy into doing those things in the first place, and when you are feeling, well, not excited about things, it’s hard to work up that energy. You also have to be careful that you are doing the right things and not just doing more stuff so you don’t have time to feel bored. I’m half unmotivated and lazy, and half totally restless. It’s kind of a frustrating place to be.

Thanksgiving is coming up and I’m going to be heading back to Iowa to visit my mom and Susan, et. al. Aside from the whole ‘oppression of native people’ thing, Thanksgiving is by far the best holiday. No presents to feel pressured to buy, plenty of warm winter drinks (Eggnog and Rum! Wassail! Glueh Wein!) The only thing to do is enjoy company, overeat, go for walks, and otherwise spend some good, quality time with people you care about. I am thankful for thanksgiving having remained relatively free of overt commercialization. Amen. Now let’s eat.

On a totally different note, something I never have understood is the way that most people seem to think it’s odd if you go out to movies by yourself. Seeing as how this is one of the least social of activities available, one would think it would be totally normal to do this. But somehow I always seem to get strange looks when I tell people I went to see a movie by myself. Asking somebody if they would like to go sit in a dark room and not talk for 2 hours doesn’t seem necessary to the enjoyment of the film (or of each-other). If somebody just ‘happens’ to want to see the film too, fine, but I really feel no pressure to find somebody to go with and find it strange that other people seem to expect this.