A Life of Ease…..

is no life indeed.

It’s 2008, and I’m back home in Singapore, pondering what to do next. Again. Three months ago, since I left America, I’ve traveled to Spain, France, and Laos. But mostly what I’ve done is one or two desultory part-time jobs and a lot of lazing around at home, waiting for a saviour to hand me my destiny on a platter.

But that won’t happen. And so I can’t think out of this mental box that I’ve created – the notion that I can’t take any action until I figure out what I really want to do. And that’s a really bad trap to be in. It makes you wake up late, peruse the career books and job listings (but not actually apply to anything), swing wildly between almost-revelation and despair…. until even uncertainty gets too comfortable, and you get used to feeling it and ignoring the vague sensation of quietly sinking into somnolence.

Analysis paralysis. Bad decision making. Poor metacognition. Call it whatever you want, but oh, it’s there.

I want to feel alive again, and not quite so useless. Lack of motivation or direction happens when you’re lazy and unfocused, and it becomes a pretty vicious cycle with ever decreasing energy levels.

What I need now is Action. I am, simply put, stuck in a rut. And a very comfortable rut it is. Still, ruts can sometimes be instructive, holding up a mirror and forcing me to see the gaps in my life-planning, the weakness in my thinking, and most importantly, my ignorance of the world, my dependence, and unwillingness to grow up. So, what to do now? How shall I move on?

Here goes. Some ideas, from the rusty brain.

Instead of ‘what should i do next’ I ought to think about what to do next, and think about where I want to be in 10 years, 20 years, etc etc. This is the time-honoured practice of setting goals. They can be miniature ones, like ‘today I’m going to write my blog again’, to long-term goals of financial independance. And of course, life goals like writing a novel (and getting it published), and walking all of the AT. The point is, write them down! And then break them down! And the start doing them!

Also important is the idea of setting up a daily habit, so that each day doesn’t pass in a blur. With the notion that you can learn discipline from it, and that habits gradually become a natural part of your life. I’m going to try to 1. wake up early and 2. do yoga or go running and 3. journal or draw or blog.

Hmm. Look at the sentence above. What’s the problem with it? Well, the first part is try. In order to get anything done, the operative word is don’t just try, DO. Excuses have a tendency to compound. Which is why some people (like me!!) need a carrot and a stick to enforce discipline. I have two wooden boxes. Every day I get it right I’ll drop some money into the large box. Every day I miss out, I take that amount, plus 10 percent interest, out of the large and put it in the small. It starts compounding, if you serially miss days. Once a month I do an accounting, and the money in the large is for me to spend on me, and the small goes to other people (Alumni fund, anyone? hehe). Voila! A mini-economy! (Am off to place a dollar into the large box now)

Lastly, and the hardest thing to convince myself of is, there are no wrong decisions. Some decisions may be better or worse, but there are no wrong decisions! Every next step leads from the previous one, whether continuously (I like this job, let’s continue) or tangentially (meh, maybe something else) or in total reverse (time to go to grad school and study physics!). I’m in my mid-twenties, which is plenty of time to try new things, and conversely, plenty of time to waste worrying about doing the wrong thing.

So, with that, let’s see me take some Action!

Cafes in Cambridge

A listing of cafes I’ve sat and read and internetted and chatted in, just for my personal enjoyment, in case I ever come back to Cambridge, Massachusetts.  I spend way too much time in cafes! (I guess this is my obligatory tourism post since I’ve been bumming around here for a month)

Darwin’s (Cambridge St): Pluses – 5 minutes away from Claire’s house, very cheap coffee, famous for their sandwiches though I’ve never had any,  good if very sweet cookies. They also serve sushi, tea bottles, organic whatever .. basically you can stay there all day. Indie rock music. Definitely a student cafe, and usually crowded. If you can grab the armchairs, they’re great! Minuses – internet occasionally down, closes early at 9pm! Also, there’s another Darwin’s in Harvard Sq, nearer to the Allston side, and wow that place looks cute!

Tealuxe (Harvard Sq): Wonderful selection of teas, brewed by expert tea people. Good scones (half-off after 8pm). Chill and quiet, with dark wood paneling. Not cosy enough to curl up with a book, but probably very good for working.

Rosie’s Bakery (Inman Square): Cutest little grandmother’s shop ever! Love the cushioned seat with the big puppet on it. So pretty! Good steamers and cake stuff. BUT! no internet! so that’s a big downer, though the old lady characters who pass through are pretty interesting. Not a place to study or read, but good for meetups and the morning paper.

1369 (Inman Square): Hm. Only been here once, and the counter girl was quite rude. Ordered a coffee, and this is only place where the didn’t have milk sitting out, so I couldn’t control how much milk I wanted. Not a happy experience, though I’ve heard good things from other people. Probably your average student cafe with not too much atmosphere. There’s another 1369 in Central Sq, but it’s always too busy and loud.

Dado Tea (Harvard Sq): what can I say… they have bubble tea! and lots of wierd tea cooler stuff. and mochi ice cream. and Japanese cheese cake. And of course, still pretty good coffee stuff. Not the cheapest for munchies, but a pretty calm serene atmosphere. Have seen Harvard students sitting with books and laptops, so it seems to be a prime study spot too.
Cafe Algiers (Harvard Sq): this place wins hands down for atmosphere – upstairs feels like a cathedral nave with Arabic art all over the walls. You know those cafes in Europe where writers gather and people plot revolutions? Feels like it here. I had a lovely pot of mint tea… but unfortunately a dry stale biscotti. The food did look good though, middle eastern fare. Pricey place, but perfect for tea after an indie film at the Brattle Theater next door….

Peets (Harvard Sq): the longest line of any cafe in Cambridge, partly because it’s a prime location next to the park, partly because people like chains, and partly because they do have good coffee. It’s worth the wait. I love the window seats (that fill up last because it’s more a counter than a table) because the floor to ceiling glass window means you can stare out at the world go by. Or, grab a coffee and sit at the park and watch the musicians.

Okay , more cafe reviews later. I’ll have to go further afield now!

Career Angst

Oh, career angst!

Jipei, Amy, Miranda and I have been playing a game of Gmail tag where we mope about our mutual aimlessness with regards to careers and general life direction. We stare at all our college friends who are in graduate school or some job they’re invested in emotionally, not just physically, and feel the insecurity traitorously overshadowing our supposed carefree and exploratory twenty-something lives.

Which begs the question. Why? Everyone says this is the best time to be indecisive, with the lowest opportunity cost. Nothing to lose, don’t consume much, tons of energy. We’re educated, supposedly bright, personable and nice, have lots of friends. Why this career angst that threatens to overshadow any past achievements or notions of self worth?

I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems that while everyone consoling says that ‘don’t worry, the stakes are low at this age’, there is a simultaneous perception that actually they aren’t. And that’s because this attitude is usually perpetuated by people comfortably secure, though slightly envious/uncertain, but not enough to exchange their security for our purported freedom. It is a fact of human nature that the grass is always greener, so that we peripatetic purposeless profligates can envy you your stability, and you can envy us our lack of structure and then pat our heads and tell us it’s all right.

So anyway, why are the stakes high?

First, people identify. Fresh out of college kids suddenly lose the identity of a student and are grabbing around for something to fill the vacuum. Since motherhood or family comes later, right now that identity is tied up with what you do. Also, those of the idealistic ilk (hello, world!) take this way too seriously – a job isn’t just a label, it’s got to be a calling. There has to be authenticity, meaning, purpose etc, else you’re selling out.

Next, the workplace isn’t the same old static arena it used to be. Jobs are more temporary/contract, new jobs come out all the time, new skills need to be learned, employers expect you to hit the ground running, job descriptions are getting increasingly specialized… the general chaos and exclusivity makes it rather intimidating for new liberal arts college grads with general skills. Maybe that’s why more savvy peers pick the straight and narrow, and hop on the secure path as fast as they can.

Third, time is running out. Again another aspect of human nature – to compare. If so-and-so you grew up with is earning a lot of money/getting a PhD early/starting a family etc, and you’re still hanging around not having a clue in the world, it does feel like you’ll soon be left behind. Soon your best years will be behind you etc etc, and you frantically try to find something, anything, ignoring the little voice saying ‘this won’t be right for you anyway’.

This leads us to #4: success versus fulfillment. Actually, external success and internal fulfillment, and where the twain does meet. Everyone knows it’s easy to confuse indicators of success with personal fulfillment (eg. nice house/high status/great network vs satisfaction at a job well done) and we turn up our idealistic noses at those who choose the former over the latter… but what if an upbringing in a supremely materialistic/success-obsessed society and a very liberal, almost hippie education makes you want BOTH? But! because of your identity crisis (see #1) you can’t quite figure out the first step, or don’t see how the two fit together. Don’t you just kind of end up having….neither?

See, the stakes ARE high. Hence decisions are difficult because we can’t deal with making the wrong decision because we’ve made the stakes so high for ourselves.

Whew! Now, how to work around that? How to deal with fears, identity issues, expectations, perceptions etc etc? It’s not just a job anymore, playing on this stage called ‘career’ is a life! How does one decide to enter the stage – with a splash or with a whimper? Does an entry even matter? Can a understudy become a star? Can you switch characters? What if the stage lights fall and interrupt the flow of the play? (okay, the metaphor is wearing thin)

And I suspect any resolutions are the subject of another post. Off to explore Somerville and find me more fun cafes!

Gradschool Blues….

I am susceptible to a rather ineffectual combination of envy and apathy.

Envy might be attributed to living in city that really is a huge college town, and being surrounded on all sides by students, professors, bookstores etc the squirming organisms of life that populate the big drafty ivory towers of universities. I miss being in a petri dish. I mean the academic bubble. (Hanging around two biologists affects my language, and Claire’s worms are actually very cute) I miss the general lack of responsibility a student has. Having no fixed routine, but stressed to the faultlines every other day over some new crisis. I’d take that any day, that willing, meaningful busyness, over a 9 to 5 braindead employee chained to a desk. Heck, sometimes I’d take that over just being a bum sitting at home and indulging in fun novels and reality tv. The problem being, if I am not kept busy by some constraint/deadline/threat of failure, I am very liable to dissolve in a puddle of languor, lethargy, straight-out laziness.

I am so apathetic! This is unlikely to change until I find some purpose in my life, or some fixed target to aim for. Which brings me back to the gradschool problem. The question is this:

Am I wanting to go to graduate school because 1) I don’t know what else to do, I like school and its culture a lot, all my friends are in school, I hate having a real cog-in-the-wheel job or 2) I’d really like to study physics/theater/literature/language (fill in the blanks) and believe that gradschool is the next step in my imagined ideal career?

As much as I hope for the latter, it’s quite clearly the former right now. One main reason being I can’t quite decide what I want to do in life. I’m having problems narrowing down the boundaries to encompass some small related grouping of fields that gives me enough flexibility to play with my interests but enough specialization that I can actually find some sort of training for it.

One always hears that if you like too many things, you have to give up some of them in order to move forward. Playing with possibilities is great, but only one possibility becomes reality. Right now I’m a clump of superpositioned photons waiting for the wave function to collapse. Waiting, and realizing that it isn’t going to happen unless I choose to myself.

Gone are the days of an easy structured path, from school to school up the academic ladder. If I have already (and indeed I have, pretty unconsciously, but quite certainly) renounced the traditional way of good school -> job in finance/law/engineering/medicine -> accumulate money/house/car/husband/kids, then any deviations have to be self-marked, and consequently marked with uncertainty. How envious I am over those who have some vested faith in an absolute belief! But fundamentally, I think I distrust that more than anything else. Maybe I like it the hard way, having to make choices and carve out a path. And I might end up in the same place as everyone else but at least I was the one who walked along the path, wide awake.

Or maybe I’m a passive-aggressive control freak, patching together a destiny, Frankenstein-style.

Scary thought.

I’ll believe I’m just confused, and am allowed to be confused for a few years more. In the meantime, I really ought to check out more grad schools.

Cheers!

A Very Comfortable Bum in Cambridge

So I got off the trail a few weeks ago, and spent all the time lazing around Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am clearly a very lazy person, which is why this isn’t a complete post. But I promise to soon

1. update on the AT adventure (from scrawls on the blue tissue paper that functioned as my journal)

2. tell everyone about what I do here in Cambridge. Which can be summarized along the lines of laze around/cook/read trashy novels/watch reality tv, and in my better moments, hang around wonderful people, and actually attempt to research graduate school programs (!) and teach myself Spanish.

More posts to come! Clearly, I have a very short attention span, which is a natural condition for a very comfortable bum.