Neoteric.
Directionless. | Sep 23rd 2007
There are nights like this one when I drink too much wine and I wonder what I will end up doing with my life.
There are options that are obvious to other people, options that are not so obvious to me.
An old internet buddy who goes by the name of Redsaid wrote that if she were me–and she is not me–she would be making billions of dollars off of her prose. I find this very flattering and very unrealistic. She is living in South Africa, a white, red-haired girl who speaks several languages and does not see race, and I think, “If I were you, I would really be living.”
It would make sense to make my living from writing, if only I knew how.
I would be a decent academic if I threw myself into it, much like I would be a decent podiatrist, physicist, or agricultural economist if I threw myself into those fields. I am a smart woman, a very smart woman, and I can write, and write well. The thought of living somewhere I hate in order to get a job, and the thought of being detached from my work (and working just to continue working) makes academia feel like a mountain of bile in my throat.
I am twenty-seven and I am directionless, and it’s always after midnight when I think about that. Tonight, I will have trouble sleeping yet again.
4 Comments »
Natalie, you know there are so many ways to define success. There is no doubt that you are already brilliantly successful. A certain age doesn’t exist where a person is supposed to have found their given path, their predestination. In all of this time I have known you, you have lived a life of honesty unlike I have ever seen. You really do follow your heart, no matter what that means, even in the face of huge risks, social pressure, and the challenge of the unknown. If more people did that, more people would be doing things they love and living lives that will leave legacies behind them. I can only hope that you find the comfort in yourself and your future that I know so many people in your life already see in your life. Not your potential, by the way, but your actual already-being-lived life.
Comment by dylan — September 23, 2007 @ 4:53 pm
Have a kid! Seriously, they take your mind off almost everything you ever thought you cared about, much like a lobotomy, and make sure you will be exhausted enough to never have that type of thoughts ever again. Useful!
Obviously I’m kidding, but it feels like that sometimes. And I’m 27 too. I doubt I’d be good at the academic life.
Comment by Gry — September 27, 2007 @ 3:11 am
You and I are like the moral in some sad old yarn. Because I look at YOU, and at – as Dylan says – your actual, already-being-lived life, and think to myself: “If I were YOU, I would really be living.”
Seriously girl. I often wonder how differently my life would have been had I been born American. Of course I don’t know for sure, but I certainly imagine that my life would have been far better than it is now. That I would be far better than I am now. Wishful thinking? Quite possibly. But that doesn’t change the fact that, almost two years after giving up on my American dream and returning to South Africa, I still wake up here and think that I must be having a nightmare. That I can’t possibly be in a place so far removed from everything I have ever wanted in life.
Anyway, I still mean what I said about your writing. Your talent blows me away. And watch it with the “I’m twenty-seven and I’m directionless”, because I am thirty-three (thirty-three!!!!) and I am directionless AND without an American visa/Green Card/boyfriend/passport.
P.S. This Dylan certainly is wise. I’m pinning the remainder of what little hope I have left on these words of his: “A certain age doesn’t exist where a person is supposed to have found their given path, their predestination.” As if I needed any further encouragement to procrastinate my life!
P.P.S. You’d make an excellent journalist. Not just because of your extraordinary way with words, but with your ability to never spoil a good story with facts. That ’several language speaking’ that you credit me with? Only two, kiddo. And neither one of them properly.
Comment by redsaid — September 27, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
Um…you could start by putting some ads on your blog. then shamelessly promoting yourself on the interworld. your writing will keep us coming back.
really.
you put our (the 20 somethings in the lost generation) situation so eloquently. i have been feeling that same way for some time but my words failed to give it a name. She called it “directionless” obvious? Perhaps. but really well stated. that mountain you mentioned? yeah i’ve had that thing in my throat for some time and i never realized how much like bile it tasted until right now.
now if you dont mind i have some bile to choke back and some pointless paper to write for some professor that will never know my name.
Comment by nicole filosa — October 18, 2007 @ 10:37 pm