Big Vent

I'm sorry, but this post is going to be boring and cranky. There's really no good reason to read it. It's for my own sake. I'm starting to feel the old familiar burn of existential crisis coming on, and I need to vent a little about my life.

I'll be 27 years old in a few days. I just spent about 50 thousand dollars in borrowed money on a Master's degree in a field that I have almost no interest in anymore. I'm single, poor, very underemployed, and ridiculously out of shape. And I don't know what career path I should follow. These are sources of anxiety for me.

I need to get healthy this year. Whatever else I do, I absolutely have to get serious about losing weight. I just wrote up a little plan for myself for doing that. I'm setting a goal to lose about 50 pounds by August. I probably could stand to lose another 50 on top of that, but just the first 50 should leave me feeling a lot more agile and healthy (and probably looking a little more sexy in my speedo). Basically, I'm going to exercise four times/week and, most importantly, consume many fewer calories. I'm going to drink a lot of water and limit the number of times I eat out each week. That's pretty much the plan. I have it tacked up on the bulletin board on my computer desk for motivation.

Career-wise.... The way I look at it, a person can have a successful career in three different ways. First, a person can make a great deal of money. Second, a person can make a decent living doing something they really enjoy. Or, third, a person can make a living while pursuing some social objective. Very, very lucky people can sometimes even achieve more than one of these goals. Most folks, though, will be lucky to achieve one, and the achievement of one is usually inimical to the achievement of the others.

I feel like my present career path is heading toward a failure to achieve any of these goals. The pursuit of large amounts of money has almost never seemed compelling to me. Doing something I really enjoy....that's complicated. I don't really know what I would enjoy doing every day. Probably drawing pictures, building things, writing and playing music, and stories, and poems...playing with kids is really fun...I love reading and watching good movies and t.v. shows. I enjoy learning about human nature and thinking about how it works. How do I make a career out of these things? These are the things that bring me joy. Oh, and hanging out and joking around with my friends. I guess that means that I want to be a film critic/comedy writer/poet/musician/pop-culture scholar/mixed-media visual artist/day-care worker/philosopher/theologian/novelist/research pyschologist. Seriously...how can I pay my bills through these interests?

For a while, I thought I wanted to pursue the last of the three goals. i thought I wanted to change things....to "save the world," as naive and cliche as it sounds. I thought I could pursue the third goal and the second at the same time. I used to love the news. Now, I don't. I don't hate it, but I don't love it. I don't spend my free time thinking about tax policy, or the war, or the 2008 campaigns, or any of the thousands of policy issues that the world faces at any given moment. And to the extent that I do still enjoy thinking and learning about those issues, I'm not sure that those interests translate into an enjoyment of the day-to-day work of policy.

So, I don't really LOVE public policy like I used to. So, that leaves the third goal...being a "change agent." If my master's degree taught me anything, it's that bureacracies do not like to change. Politicians make decisions. Politicians are the change agents. Them, and maybe the high level bureaucrats in major, important agencies. From where I'm sitting today, it don't look like any of those positions are really in the cards for me. I'm just....I guess I'm just not change-agent material. Hell, this blog pretty much sinks any political career I might have had...that, and the fact that I hate talking to strangers...and that I'm a heretic...and that I generally dislike bureaucrats and businessmen and, in general, the type of people who want to work in this field, and that I make a lot of tasteless and offensive jokes.

I guess I'm concerned because this public policy PhD plan is sort of a compromise....sort of an attempt to achieve all three goals in some measure without achieving any of them completely. Perhaps it would be better to pursue one goal completely. At this point, given the idiosyncracies of my personality, I'm thinking that it might be better to pursue the second goal (career enjoyment) at the expense of the others. Which makes me think, if I'm going to do a PhD, I should probably do it in something I find really interesting. Choosing the policy subject-matter was the result of trying to pursue goal one and goal three. The job market for PhDs in the humanities is really tight, but it's not bad for public policy. Also, policy studies has a bit more of a chance to have real-world impact.

But, maybe I should just say "fuck it" to the other goals, and pursue something I feel passionately about....something that makes me light up and take notice. Unfortunately, the thing I spend the most of my free time thinking about is women. But, after that, music and books and movies are probably at the top of my area of interest. I was thinking about a PhD in, like, American Studies....that might be a way to focus on all that stuff. But, can I make a living in that path? Can I find A job, even if it sucks? Or, maybe philosophy, or even psychology!

Or, maybe I should just drop it all and start making art in some way and try to sell it.

I don't need to make a lot of money, but I need to pay my own way somehow or another. I guess that goes without saying.

See, I told you this was boring. If you read down to here, you are a sympathetic chump, and I love you for it.