Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Bubble Bursting

Somedays you think, hey, my life isn't that bad, I can live with it. I'm relatively happy and I have relatively many things to be happy with and excited about. I don't need bigger things to look forward to.

Then, you get a reality check and you realise you're really wasting your time here. Where your abilities and training aren't used to the fullest, either because you're too young, inexperienced or basically, just not at the right place at the right time. And you realise, that's why you need to go away, to go elsewhere, to do something other than what you're doing now. That's why sometimes, you feel restless and other people gripe and are unhappy.

I'm generally not fussy about where I live. As long as there's good food, mild weather, good shopping and friends and family that love me, I'm good. I'm not as vocal and indignant as the more-educated and enlightened overseas Arts grads about media freedom and we live in a nanny state. It doesn't bother me as much. Intellectually, I get it, but I cannot get myself as riled up about it as, say, Dan does because I like most of my life here. I can't see myself staying in Singapore forever, but it's not a BAD place to be in my opinion.

In my most comfortable of times, I question my own need to go away to grad school. But there are always situations like this that shock me out of my complacency and easily contented inertia. I need to be somewhere, doing something I'm passionate about. If research and writing academic papers gets me excited then by jove! (I've been meaning to use that!), I should be doing it or at least given the opportunity to do it.

I know what I'm doing now makes a difference for the kids I'm teaching now. I do get a certain amount of satisfaction doing that. But it's not what gets me going. The nerd/geek in me quietly and steathily grows larger and more assertive everyday. It's more unforgiving to my inertia and gets more easily riled when it realises that it's been passed over for a research or an academic exercise that was right up its alley.

I'm willing to bet most of my peers would have trashed the email and wouldn't have thought twice about it. But for me, it was like one of those phone reminders that beeps incessantly till you pay it the attention it requires.

So,
complacency shaken? - Check.
Inertia and easy contentment rocked? - Check.
A need for action reawakened? - Check.
Reality?- Check.

Ondine tossed this thought in at 17:07

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