For some reason, I’d like to take this opportunity to evaluate my New Year’s plan to make every move a killing move. First, what prompted me to do this evalution.
I recently revisited an old post-it note, “What do you want? Take it.” I needed motivation. But then, I thought, “What do I want?” I had no idea what I wanted.
Therein lied the dilemma with my New Year’s resolution. How can I make every move a killing move if I don’t even know what I’m trying to kill? I was trying to make every move have a purpose, but I had no goal. That’s why it hasn’t proven effective. I like the idea of the method, but it’s too focused.
I think of pool and how the purpose is to try to win. However, you can’t just will yourself to win. You have to practice and practice in order to make shots. You have to know how to play. You have to know what you’re playing.
I have no idea what I’m playing or what I’m doing.
Sure, I can tell myself, “Take it.” But what the fuck am I taking? What the fuck do I want to take?
Sorry about the profanity, but this is really frustrating. I’m currently paralyzed with indecision.
I think I’m going to reformulate the resolution to “What do you want? Take it.” At least it acknowledges that there’s a question of what I want.
Even then, I want to be president, let’s say. But I’m not going to make everything in my life push towards that goal. That’d be a very unsatisfying life. I have other pursuits. Hm. I guess that kills the “Every move is a killing move” idea.
I’ll tell you what I don’t want, though. Whatever it is I’m doing now… this college thing… I’m sick and tired. I mean, even if I take a new frame of mind to the issue and look at college as a place with lots of opportunities, I still see my classes as essentially useless. Well, not useless… just… extraneous. Yes, that’s the right word, I guess. I don’t want to be that negative, but that’s how I feel. There are a billion other things I’d rather do. Now, if I could only figure out what those billion things are.
What do I want?
Shawn…
…isn’t the question of what you want based on the fundamental issue of who you are? So, if you have a reasonably good idea of your identity—or of the core elements which you choose to frame your identity—then the answer to the question of what you want should just flow from that basic understanding.
But life and selfhood are messy things, not at all neat equations that can be summed up in a pithy, glib paragraph as the one immediately preceding.
From your weblog’s “ID statement,” you say that you’re an American and a moderate Republican, for starters. A regular reader of your online journal will certainly know that that identification has recently taken a drubbing. Or, more precisely, the GOP of which you have stated some fealty towards, has taken a crude rock (the corruption, hypocrisy, incompetence, etc.) and bashed your self-identification, to agonizing effect.
Not to smithereens, to be sure, but dented badly enough to make you question your allegiance to the party. Certainly not to the core conservative values you hold, but definitely to the political party which purportedly carries the philosophical banner you walk under.
But that’s ‘just’ politics, and, serious as that domain might be, simple personhood comes first. ::chuckle:: And so the next thing one reads in the weblog “About Me” is that you’re a 19-year old student.
It’s a truism that human beings of that age are generally still in ‘trial and error’ mode, to put it glibly. (Some of us twice older, in middle age, generally find ourselves in simple error mode, the years of trial not necessarily having rendered us any wiser. ::snicker::)
What practical trial-and-error situation, you might ask? Well, your consideration of leaving the GOP and maybe even joining the Dems, that’s one.
At any rate the suggestion here is that, being at this age, perhaps you may not have truly found yet the answers to the question of who you are. Hence, it follows that you may not know what you want, for some time to come.
A practical conclusion then: don’t sweat the unknown unknowns, to paraphrase our soon-to-be-departed and not quite beloved SecDef.
It is enough to have asked the question, as you did… in the time to come, you will find out what you want, as surely as day follows night.
If you’re reading SCOTUSblog, law school may be the next move…
Otherwise, I’d say seek out mentors you respect and see what opportunities develop from that.