Shit. Despite all the online soul-searching I’ve been doing this year… despite the fact half the comments on this post are from bloggers I’ve been reading in order to figure out what I want to do with my life (eg here and here) and all that jazz… why has it taken so long for me to find this…???

In order to jump-start passionate living again you might have to…

  • Stop being an (unnecessarily) “responsible” person
  • Quit projects that are no longer relevant
  • Be happy with a less than permanently clean home

 In order to come alive, you might have to…

  • Pursue an occupation that doesn’t put your insanely expensive degree to use
  • Move back in with your parents
  • Work a low-status, low-paying job in order to make time for your new endeavor
  • Come to terms with your messy home
  • Completely and utterly ignore your parent’s and friend’s expectations of you

If you really want to live passionately, you’ll need to consider leaving nearly everything you’re not passionate about.  To live passionately you may have to quit your job, sell your home, rent a small apartment, and live simply for a while.

To get off the treadmill you’ll have to realize that your high IQ does not obligate you to work 80-hour weeks in high-status professional career.  Your high IQ also doesn’t obligate you to get a Ph.D., or to put on any other golden handcuffs.

Fark. I might just not have to go back to fricking “Therapy” anymore.

And maybe I need to sit down for a while sometime soon and start thinking about WHY I need apply for the Rhodes Scholarship before I start filling out the application form that is sitting on my desk right now. (Although, the whole “push the pause button” thing was what I “learned” in “Therapy” last week so maybe I should keep going.)

In a way, I want to go to Oxford to study something that I’m passionate about, that probably definitely won’t lead me into a high-status, high-paying career… but on the other hand, do I really want to go through yet another cattle-show of an interview process and another two years of brain-straining graduate studies? What if the path I’m on right now is my life’s calling?

Gawd it would be nice to be less neurotic, wouldn’t it?