“All this time lingers undefined…”

Mm, Weakerthans lyrics. They amaze me.

1. I went for a short 7.2-mile bike ride yesterday, to Haveli India, the delicious Indian restaurant on South Main. There were very few sidewalks, and it was a bit hilly via Route 17, but overall it was beautiful with the changing leaves and ponds by the roadside.
2. I submitted, with deep regret, my resignation to Apple last night.
3. Today, I worked at Learning Objects, went to the bank, bought groceries, went to class, took a tiny little nap, and did lots of reading. Tamara at the bank greets me every time I walk in. She’s quite friendly and always remembers my name.
4. I have a midterm essay to write tonight, and then I will take the in-class portion of it tomorrow. I am nowhere near as prepared as the professor made it seem we should be.
5. The Weakerthans are playing in Boston on November 1, and I plan on getting tickets (only $15!). Now, I just need Chris, Josh, and Matt to get back to me about whether they would like to be party to the awesomeness.

Of more import, though, is something I’ve only briefly alluded to thus far on Another Sunny Day.

It is no new news that this semester has definitely presented me with some challenges. I have been acting to remedy what I’d realized back before the term even started—that I had overburdened myself this year, leading to a drastic decline in my quality of life, academic performance, and general happiness. My grades are a bit lower than I am satisfied with. I don’t feel like I’m learning particularly much from my classes, and I’m increasingly doubting what my liberal education will do for me after graduation.

Nevertheless, slowly but surely, I’m trying to dig myself out of this hole, but it’s proving a tough process.

Add to that overburdening the general malaise into which I’ve fallen lately; a malaise that, while probably only about a month in duration so far, shows no signs of abating without conscious and deliberate planning and action on my part. I look back on the past two years of college, as the last year quickly descends upon me, and while I can say that I’ve been happy, had a rockin’ time, made kickass friendships, and have tremendously expanded my worldview (Wesleyan’s good for that), I feel like I’m still completely unprepared for the world ahead; I feel like I’ve failed to make the kinds of connections that I’ll need to be successful later, and that in terms of direction in life, the past two years have lacked it entirely. I look back and see that I’ve been drifting, unsure of my place and unsure of where I want to go… unsure even of any semblance of how to get somewhere once I’ve figured out that it’s where I’d want to be.

This, my friends, is—as far as I can discern at present—the root cause of my current malaise. Certainly there are additional factors, though I am not at liberty to discuss them with others at the moment (much less, post them in such a public forum). But the root cause is this drift, this total lack of surety in nearly all things.

And this scares me, because it’s something that, realistically, is probably un-solvable within the ever-constricting limits of my college career. It scares me because when I had challenges to meet in the past, I worked tirelessly to meet them, to meet the end goal towards which I knew I was racing. Now there is no goal, and I can’t find a way to define one. Nor is anyone putting a goal in front of me. I am stuck on the course, being passed by and not even sure if I’m going in the right direction anymore. I’m lost.

It scares me, most of all, because this type of malaise is not something into which I’m accustomed to falling. I’ve only been in states of sustained unhappiness for brief periods before, and then, those were few and far between. Invariably, something clicks inside of me, something shows me that the sun’s still out, that it still feels good to smile, and it’s on to another year or two of smiles and laughing. That’s always how it’s worked. I don’t want that to stop.

It scares me, quite a bit. I feel like I need some kind of transformative experience, that I need to find a “calling” or some intense academic interest. Really, just a passion for anything would be nice at this point. If I don’t find something, what will I do? Where will I go? And by that point, how will I even find a way to get there?

That scares me.