The Future (wonderings about the path of my life)

I find that my thoughts take me to many different places while I'm lying in bed for hours, looking at the lights that dance behind my eyelids, uncomfortable and overhot or cold by turns as I shift around within the soft sheets that feel like sandpaper...I can't vouch for the coherency of this post...its basically what I often do on paper...but I felt like feeling the keyboard under my fingers...so you get treated to my midnight...well one-o-clock...ramblings. Oh...and in case there was any doubt they started from the first word.

This is what I do when I can't sleep I just follow my thoughts...wherever they take me. And I find its a lot easier to get them out of my head, so I can ignore them and get some sleep, if I write them down. It makes for the need to regularly take a pile of papers out of my room to recycle...when I get around to it...when I decide my room has reached the point of clutter just past messy and into slovenly...whatever that's supposed to mean

well I can see that my meanderings seem to have even less of a point than usual...lucky anyone who's decided to try and read this...its why I called my website Random Musings...seeing as it was created...and developed and added to only during these non-coherent, tired, but completely unable to sleep episodes...Which, by the way, I reformatted and added a guestbook to right before beginning this diatribe...

The world, it seems to me has begun to move in two opposite directions...its really almost a paradox of sorts...it seems to be both shrinking, becoming small. Bridged by technology: planes, telephones, the internet, cars, trains...etc... And yet in other ways it seems to be becoming larger. More expansive...

And I don't know that I like either of them really...but it seems (rather ironically) that it is the expanding that seems to be making me feel more claustrophobic...as the world seems to shrink...it becomes easier (to my mind) to escape from the rut...to go elswhere...meet new people...Though it also makes it seem that there are fewer places to escape to and less chance of getting far...but in a way that's good because it gives you the security of knowing that your lifeline the network of relations, friends etc are still within reach...

But it also seems that it removes a means...a direction of escape...if even for a little while...from the responsibilities, the rigid societal structures that have been built up...that are imposed upon us and ingrained in us throughout our entire lives...Its like that song by Great Big Sea really:
Penelope
Released January 2002
(written by Chris Hynes)
Penelope works in the market
Down in the coconut trees
She’s saving up all her money
To go to America across the sea

She once had an uncle
He lived in Detroit town
They got all his post cards
But his body has never been found

To this day
To this day

She got a job as a domestic
Workin' for the minimum wage
All her friends back home in Jamaica
They say, ‘You really got it made in the shade’

But they don’t see her sweat and grind
And her bended on her knees
She wishes she was back in Jamaica
Beneath the coconut trees

Penelope’s back in the market
She found what it was all about
Oh no, she doesn’t regret it
She’s just glad that she got out

But others aren’t so lucky
They’re there till the day they die
Trapped in steel and concrete
No beach No moon No sky


or a story my mom has called...oh what is it called, working towards what you already have? or something similar...

its just that it seems that the world...my future...is just coming a bit too fast...I mean I know that I'm ahead of a lot of people...in that I know what I want to do...its just that...I don't know that I want to do it yet...if that makes any sense whatsoever

I mean, yes I want to go into geology, I want to learn about it...study it...and eventually take a career in relation to it...its just that there is so much else that I want to do...and I look at my parents...who are great people who also knew what they wanted to do...but because they fell in love, had a family, and have to take care of us are stuck in a sort of half-life in terms of employment...because not too much money can be made as an artist...so they work for the post office...for people they don't like, with horrible management, making enough to have us in the lower-middle income, range so we can live comfortably...eat well, live with more luxuries than a lot of people out there in the world...but they are stuck there...in these jobs they don't like, unable to do a lot of things I know they would like to do...

Not having done a lot of things they wanted to do....

I know my dad wants to paint full time...I mean he'll come home from work and go down to his studio...which he always talks about expanding...maybe taking over the garage for his studio or the like...but with one thing or another it just doesn't happen...not enough time at one point, not enough money at another, or sometimes its just not enough energy....but I mean he'll come home and he'll paint...or sketch or sometimes he'll just sit in the old chair he claimed for his studia and just look at the painting he's working on for an hour...sometimes he'll start working on it after that, other times he'll go upstairs...

anyhow I guess what I'm trying to say...in a roundabout, verbose manner...is that I suppose I'm a little bit frightened of trapping myself without having seen something of the world...without having taken the chances offered to me to expand my knowledge...I don't know that I want to go into University and immediatly streamline my studies to geology...yet I do want to enter it now as well...its just that I want to do other things take other courses as well...I don't want to be trapped to one path...one viewpoint...one disipline....and I want to learn things that don't just satisfy my curiosity, my wants and needs...I want to learn things that will help other people...I want to do things that will make some sort of difference in someone's life...

which I suppose brings me to how the world seems to also be expanding, it seems to be expanding in its problems...the troubles that abound in people's lives, in regions, in nations, everywhere...perhaps its simply me becoming more aware of what's occuring globally or perhaps it what my social teacher referred to as convergence theory...perhaps its simply a bunch of occurances, of forces coalescing like steam building up pressure until it all explodes in a flurry of activity.... But I look at the world today and I wonder what good we really can do...we can help one person...help their brief spark glow more brightly...but that leaves millions of others out there who aren't going to get help...there is only so much that can be achieved...and in some cases I think that the attempts to help end up doing the opposite...but does that make the attempts any less worthy?

I guess I just have to say I just don't know...there are so many things that could be done...but so many of them just aren't possible, or wanted by those that make the decisions...or hold the resources...in the end it ammounts to the same thing I suppose....and there are so many...so many...war, disease, famine, drought, abuse, depression, poverty...not to mention the little everyday problems that surround us...which can cut just as deep, a friend's misfortune, a death, an injury... anything really...heck even the little girl you babysit who trips and scrapes her knee and then cries as you hold her and tells you how she wants her mom, and how she wishes her mom wouldn't leave her even if its just for a night...

And no one can heal all of them...to even begin to make a difference in some you have to pick your battles...but how do you choose them really? Particularly when everywhere you turn it seems there are more and more issues to be faced...more problems cropping up...all of them as unsolvable as the ones before...as unsolvable as the ones that will come after...

Perhaps it get easier to decide...easier to pick the battles as you become more solid as a person...begin to understand yourself more...at least that's what I always tell myself...because I do know that no one can face all of these problems...not even a person who could dedicate their entire life to them could do it...

And I guess that's the crux of the matter...the reason its so difficult for me to accept...its as my friends tell my I am the cynical optimist...my optimistic side tells me constantly that only by making the efforts can a difference be made...and that it is possible to make a difference...while my cynical side watches and quietly draws attention to the expanse of problems out there...and that even in making an effort...my contribution on its own is like attempting to scratch a diamond with a nickle...

But I guess that's why I need my optomistic side...I mean it keeps me going...keeps me busy... gives me the motivation to do what I need to do...but I guess it becomes slightly weaker at 2:00 in the morning...seeing as that seems to be the time when the dark little thoughts start to appear...oh well...

A person who is completely happy...does not exist...a person without a dark side is incomplete just as a person without a light side is incomplete

as I begin to sound like a druid: balance, balance, balance...but I really do believe that a balance is important...in life...in nature...in everything...but I'm more the neutral good type...balance is important...but if you don't strive for what you feel is right...well then what can you really do? Existentialism is only bleak if you look at it from the middle....

and with that bit of cryptic thought (I can tell you that when I read that when I wake up I'm almost garuanteed to go "huh?!?") I think I'll head to bed...because my mind feels suffieciently cleaned out to allow me to shut it down...

~Night