Attempting to establish a new rhythm once the regular beat of life is upended can prove a tough task, especially for the percussion challenged.
A major live event, like a move, compounded by he variables such as home purchase, work transitions, car troubles, financial concerns... tends to upend life's regular beat.
Add to the situation a penchant for existential crisis, and self-doubt and you have the perfect condition for a protracted approach to establishing a rhythm, new or old.
Clunky comparisons are my speciality.
I am straddling this long transition, waiting for the expected feelings to arrive, which is absurd. I feel how I feel, regardless of what one 'ought to feel.' I have ever balked at the perspective that there is a conventional path complete with conventional corresponding feelings. I have observed when I try to follow that path in search of those feelings I am left floundering off into the rough. I get so far afield, the landscape is unrecognizable, and I must forge my own path.
College.
Dropping out of college.
Engagement.
Back to college.
Break engagement. (PHEW!!)
Student teaching (yikes! No thank you should I ever teach)
second placement in an environmental education center (Yes. this is my jam!)
Graduate
finally, and by now I am path forging through an unknown landscape
Many a year (MANY) and misadventure later, I still find the conventional path unfamiliar and un-navigable, though I have passed milestones
- marry
- buy a house
- plan for retirement
The milestones give a language for inhabiting a culture familiar with them. I still often feel isolated and misunderstood - well, not misunderstood, for that implies an attempt to explain myself. In an attempt at more apt expression I search my vocabulary and dictionary. Isolated is accurate. In place of misunderstood I offer perplexing, as in "I am perplexing to others, if they stop to consider me at all.
A beloved friend of mine once gifted me a marvelous trinket - a small, ovate coin with a raised image of a figure beating a drum, the other side of the coin inscribed, "my own drummer."
I call on that inner drummer now, beat me a rhythm so I may dance.
A major live event, like a move, compounded by he variables such as home purchase, work transitions, car troubles, financial concerns... tends to upend life's regular beat.
Add to the situation a penchant for existential crisis, and self-doubt and you have the perfect condition for a protracted approach to establishing a rhythm, new or old.
Clunky comparisons are my speciality.
I am straddling this long transition, waiting for the expected feelings to arrive, which is absurd. I feel how I feel, regardless of what one 'ought to feel.' I have ever balked at the perspective that there is a conventional path complete with conventional corresponding feelings. I have observed when I try to follow that path in search of those feelings I am left floundering off into the rough. I get so far afield, the landscape is unrecognizable, and I must forge my own path.
College.
Dropping out of college.
Engagement.
Back to college.
Break engagement. (PHEW!!)
Student teaching (yikes! No thank you should I ever teach)
second placement in an environmental education center (Yes. this is my jam!)
Graduate
finally, and by now I am path forging through an unknown landscape
Many a year (MANY) and misadventure later, I still find the conventional path unfamiliar and un-navigable, though I have passed milestones
- marry
- buy a house
- plan for retirement
The milestones give a language for inhabiting a culture familiar with them. I still often feel isolated and misunderstood - well, not misunderstood, for that implies an attempt to explain myself. In an attempt at more apt expression I search my vocabulary and dictionary. Isolated is accurate. In place of misunderstood I offer perplexing, as in "I am perplexing to others, if they stop to consider me at all.
A beloved friend of mine once gifted me a marvelous trinket - a small, ovate coin with a raised image of a figure beating a drum, the other side of the coin inscribed, "my own drummer."
I call on that inner drummer now, beat me a rhythm so I may dance.
Comments
Post a Comment