paralysis.

I met a girl last night, a new server.  After a few passing words, we recognized a bit of sameness, although, to the eye, we could not be more different.  

It's funny how touching on a few topics can spark a friendship where, too often, there would be only thinly veiled distaste.  

I felt lucky.  So, it turns out, did she.

Our common ground?  Philosophy.  Eastern religions.  A general distaste for people who assume they know.  An extreme discomfort with an all-too-common insistence upon rendering greys in black and white.

It got me thinking about how many people in 'menial' or 'low' jobs are actual quite smart.  And how surprised we are when we find out that the dishwasher has a degree in environmental engineering, that the barista is a nearly flawless opera singer, that the cook is a philosopher.  

Of course, then I go upstairs and find that a former classmate just landed a tenure track professorship, and I get all fucked up because I'm wasting my life.  

I need to undo this knot in my head that has deemed certain careers 'worthy' and others, somehow, not. I never thought I had that in me, but as I move in this odd side-step, I find that I have this fear of not doing enough--whatever that may mean.  

 The academic track doesn't come easily to me.  It's quite tortuous.  In part, this is because I'm a perfectionist, but more, because I'm always afraid of offending and, simultaneously, of being misunderstood.  I'm also afraid because so much of higher level education is based on indoctrination.  I'm spending so much effort trying to figure out how I think....the thought of doing that at the same time as I try to figure out how a whole field functions seems impossible.  I couldn't imagine doing the work to become a bona fide philosopher, because how could I weed out the theories and philosophies that seem valid and those that don't?  I can't even pin down the tenets of my own ideas about the world and how it works yet.  I think it's why I'm caught in this frenetic non-movement, this paradoxical paralysis, where I'm spinning...spinning...trying to catch a glimpse of what I believe so that I can take the next step, but ultimately, I'm not moving at all.