Sunday, January 29, 2012

Pushmepullme

One of my very good friends, Becky, is moving back from London to Boston in about a week or so.  She and I lived together in the Cambridge apartment for about a year and a half; she had traveled up from NYC during a snowstorm to spend the weekend looking at different apartments, but decided after just seeing my place to move in with me and whoever my other roommates were.  We've been friends ever since.

A couple nights ago, we were chatting online, and our discussion turned to our respective jobs:  me and my recent promotion at my store, and her with her job search.  One of the things we found ourselves agreeing about was the hesitation we both were feeling at doing something "just to do it".  For her, it was about the whole act of just taking a job to have a job--this is a sentiment I feel a lot of empathy for, having gone through essentially the same process last year (though for slightly more complicated reasons).

My promotion at work has a bit of the same flavor to it--I am very happy to get a slight bump in pay, and to have a bit more responsibility (and freedom, by way of this), but I'm also a little wary of the opportunity, more from the standpoint of commitment.  The actual commitment itself is not what concerns me:  it's more the curious lattice of what commitment I put into my job, the guitar circle, my personal work/playing/practice, and my personal life.

Tessa used to insist, whenever I would muse aloud about some idea for a musical-or-otherwise project, that I didn't have time for it, unless I dropped something else.  I am inclined to disagree--I really do have more free time then what I use--but I am becoming much more aware of what commitment goes where, and what returns I get on my investments.  The game is also moving from a short-term investment to a more long-term plan, though I am in that weird in-between moment.

Back on the subject at hand, I'm seeing this question of "why" popping up quite a bit, lately.  If there is one thing I have learned in the past three years, it is to at least acknowledge the gut reaction--it has a power that might not be 100% right, but there's probably something of value there.  There's also that fairly important difference between a gut reaction and "I like this".  That can probably be summed up by asking which one is more of a trap.

And that's sort of the crux of this.  One of the really freeing aspects of working in the circle is the knowledge that, while I have a great deal of personal commitment and loyalty to my work within the group, I could walk away tomorrow, and the other members would understand.  I also believe that, if they did not understand, or if they noticed a logical inconsistency in my reasoning, that they would bring it to light--that's what friends do.  I might be wrong, but I don't believe so.

Extrapolating this out a bit, into the everyday world, I think this is why so many people end up unhappy with their lot in life.  Sometimes, it really is the case that we simply trip over our right life path by trying something a little different, but then that can eat up the available attention for noticing when the really big "pull" shows up.

More later.

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