Some days I get up and don’t know why I get up. Not like today sucks, why did I get up at all? But more of I open my eyes and I wonder why I get up. Actually I wake up maybe 75% of the time with this feeling. I know I have things to get done that day, but I wonder why I do them. I quit being a geologist because I could not see myself answering that question with anything in geology. I woke knowing every day that even as I told the world that I wanted/was going to be a geologist, it wasn’t a reason to get out of bed. As horrible as it sounds despite the fact that it sounds good to say “Today, I am going to find a way to save thousands of lives by figuring out how to better predict earthquakes/mudslide” or “Today is the day I am going to do *insert geology thingy* to figures out why Mars core died.”
For a really long time, I felt ashamed, because this is why I gave up a life- long dream, because in the few minutes of subconscious ruled thinking in my mornings my mind told me I didn’t really care, for what I was planning to do with my life. While rocks and theoretical people were great, I wanted to help people daily, the joy I found in helping a patron in the library, planning summer programs, or my favorite memories of work, making databases and planning schedules for other people, wasn’t quite as temporary as the fleeting pleasure of rocks. The more I look at the world and myself the more I begin to wonder if I want to be a planner of some sort. I get a thrill of joy in organization, planning, thinking plans through to the end, and looking at every possible consequence (save opening my mouth around friends, Sorry ya’ll.) My international business management class project last semester I really enjoyed I loved finding out tons of information about a company, locations, markets, and piling into a report. I like doing business research, it’s a thrill, and I can get up and say “Today, I am going to help X company/group, by figuring out their problem and/or giving them new ideas to expand their products/market/customer relations or whatever my specialty becomes.” Not sure if that means I will go become a consultant at a consulting firm, or maybe become a business/contract lawyer. While I still wake up not knowing exactly why I get up every morning, my mind is forming a vague cloud of thought wiggling its self from the back of my mind into reality. This thought is pleasant to the mind even if it’s not quite in focus yet, and it’s better than the blank that it has replaced.
I know some of you reading this have been worrying about me, as the once overwhelmingly driven Emily now is replaced by Emily, seeming to float by, not sure where she is going. While it worries me too some days, I think you should know I am happier in this state of unknowing. I don’t have a plan but I know what I want, which sadly despite all my planning before I didn’t know. Some of those, I ignored because they “weren’t in my nature” that now I realize was ever much in my nature but let others opinions of my abilities and strength, or even the nature of fate, over ride my own emotional, spiritual hopes and dreams. Some I didn’t even realize I had until I grew up. I want things the old plan would never have been able to deal with, so it would have been scraped anyways. The Plan never had children, but now I know I want them, and now I know when I get a stable job and place that I know I want to call home (city/area) that I will begin to work on adopting/fostering them. I want a home with fish and plants, not an empty apartment or house that I only see every few months and vague remember how its white walls are different from the hotels/ camps; I stayed in while I worked on assignment. I know I want coworkers that I love to see and work, I didn’t give before. I still want to travel for work but I don’t want a home that is equally or less appealing to live in than a hotel. Okay, maybe not the best proof of my earlier humanity and more likely shows how worthy I was of Litchy’s nickname for me, Stranger, I was, but it’s something I want, that is some much different from who I was before.
Not sure why I am reflecting on the changes the last few years have brought, maybe it Japan, or maybe its guilt. After all how many weird vague answers have I given you about why geology wasn’t good enough major and I chose to get a degree in something “everyone” gets like International business. Why I traded a 70, 000 starting salary for a mere 43, 000; why I chose something hard for me like Japanese over something easy like quantitative measurements. Why I study coding to modify databases to better fit my needs, over learning environmental stimulation programs. Why do willing spend seven hours studying for a management exam, but I could never find the energy to study 3 hours for Mineralogy. Why I can spend every free second in a week looking for more information about market entry for a small car company in the US, but I got annoyed if I had to spend three hours looking for a geology paper about the Cranberry Gneiss. I can’t explain it well, but it is who I am. And maybe that is why even though I don’t know why I get up most morning, getting up has gotten easier and more enjoyable for me over the last year. Good morning world.
