This activity brings me to life. And it doesn't have to be elaborate. Last year, a friend had to take a cup of coffee to his girlfriend at work. It was a few miles away. I was excited to go. Genuinely excited.
I have an uncanny ability to walk away from the familiar for something foreign without much fear. There's usually a lot of unexpected to deal with once I arrive, but the getting there is emotionally quite easy.
Last night I went to a synagogue. I hadn't ever been to a synagogue before. Yann Martel, the author of a brilliant book, was speaking there. Going somewhere I've never been before to hear an author I admire speak does something real for me. It quenches a thirst rooted in dehydration.
It turns out he was brilliant, not surprisingly. And before stumbling upon writing, he was pretty aimless. He came from education, a travel-filled childhood, and academic parents. After finishing an undergraduate in philosophy and being "unsatisfied" with academia, he both washed dishes and worked as a security guard. He found writing to be that thing that consistently satisfied. And he wrote a lot of bad stuff before Life of Pi. Eventually he embraced it, lived on little, and wrote.
My years seem to be inching me closer and closer to this reality. I find the professional realm of reality to be quite unsatisfying. I have no interest in selling anything to anyone else. I have interests and hobbies, but when I place my interests up against the pressure of using using them to make a living, they lose their allure. Writing my own commentary on life is a natural reaction I have to living, and it never lacks satisfaction. I write a lot of bad stuff with no intention to stop. I already live on very little. That's another natural reaction I have to life.
Today I went somewhere else. I got away. And I am sitting in front of a new window typing this out with the knowledge that the people I run into are all strangers; Their daily landscape is completely different than mine, and they have no choice but to share theirs' with a stranger today. Later I will have lunch with an old friend, the woman who coincidently told me I should read Life of Pi, the book that took me to me the synagogue last night, a night that will help solidify the idea that occupational misdirection isn't a flaw for someone that finds more satisfaction in writing life commentary than anything else.
It's also a plus that occupational misdirection lends itself to the going, the other thing that brings me upmost satisfaction. Keep going, and keep writing, and keep being inspired by thoughtful well spoken writers that have themselves kept going, and kept writing.
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