I've been taking some time off while I try to sort out my next career move and keep pace with the devil's cauldron that is modern western capitalism. Some observations of the last many weeks:
Things fail more often than they succeed.
Businesses fail, restaurants fail, relationships fail. Opportunities don't pan out the way you expected them to. That guy who said he'd call you back about that thing, doesn't. That novel you've been working on isn't actually very good. More often than not, you're screwed, and you're life becomes a disjointed serious of fits and starts with no clear purpose or direction. All you can do is make a virtue of perseverance and try to make narrative sense of all your failures and successes. String them together in a long chain of cause and effect (even when there is none) until you make yourself feel better.
Right now I'm between jobs, facing an uncertain future, and being forced to sum up and evaluate what I've done so far. Sure it's just a resume, but it's also a little snapshot of all your choices and opportunities. Should I have gone into a different field? Should I have done more with my education? Should I have been able to see this coming way back in the 11th grade? How can I gorilla glue and staple gun all these job titles together? How can I putty in the holes in my education and technical know-how? How can I go out there and sell myself without feeling like a sell-out?
But this is not a "can" or a "should" problem. We persevere because we must. Because at the end of the day, it's all about what needs to be done. Live, survive, keep going. Fight another day. Most of the time we fail, we retreat, we reevaluate. But sometimes, maybe next time, we succeed.
