Posted on 02/16/2011 9:31:50 AM PST by JamesP81
I don't really have anybody I can talk to about this that would understand. I don't expect FR too either, but it's as good a place as any to vent.
You know what I do? I get up every day and go to work. I do my job and get my work done. I come home. I do it again the next day. And then again, and again, and again.
When I am dead, the most anyone will ever say about me is "he went to work ever day". If I were to simply drop dead, everything would pretty much be as if I had never lived. I have accomplished nothing noteworthy and I don't expect to. When my life is over with, the world will not be a better place, no one's lives will have been improved, and the evil that lives in the world will not have been pushed back.
This leaves me feeling....sick inside my soul. As if something is very, very wrong. The only thing I really look forward to is burying myself in the mundane of the normal to the degree that I do not think about these things. By and large this works, but some days I take my head out of the sand, and the result of that is days like today.
I've tried many things. When I was in school, I spent time every week in a nursing home. It did the folks there good to see anybody. But it did not fill the void. I am a blackbelt in karate and used to exercise a lot. It was good for me, but it did not fill the void. I have good friends, but I don't see them as much as I used to. We're all out of college, have jobs, and some have kids now. But even during the heyday of college, I couldn't fill the void with other people. I have hobbies. They're fun, but they leave me empty. I don't want to drop everything and be a drifter, but I don't want to sit still. I am not into carousing and having casual sex with whatever comes along. Never have been, and I'm fairly certain it would make me feel worse. I am a Christian; I do not speak to God as much as I should, but I do at times. He is supposed to have purpose for me, but I don't know what it is. I hope He has something for me other than work 9-5 until I'm dead.
A lot of people will say that your purpose is what you make of it. Every bit of evidence and observation I have tells me that's true. Yet I don't believe it, and never have.
In before "man up you wuss".
No mocking from me. I understand how you feel. I too am alone now in my life’s journey. When I was younger it seemed purpose was a myriad of things from trying to ‘save’ my classmates, to prayer for my family, to my own falling away and returning.
Growing up I could never picture my life past 25...now I am approaching 50. Just the other night as I sat in my empty house with my cats (2). Not a crazy cat lady... I asked God...here I am again...what is it I am to do?
And these thoughts came to mind...
Sometimes we’re not all given to the big things in His plans, sometimes we’re there to be that little thread to hold it all together. Have you ever grabbed hold of that little dangling thread and pulled it...only to have the whole thing unravel?
That is how I look at my life for now. I’m not making big waves or even really part of the weave of the rug...but just maybe I am that little dangling thread waiting for the Great Weaver to finish me or for the cat to come along and pull on me.
I’m not real good with people, never have been. I am real good with animals though. Since starting my own business the clients that come in contact with me are “amazed” and use phrases like...”you have a gift with animals.”
Here I am nearly 50 years old and like you I’ve been and done many things, but none have ever been called a “gift.” Cashier, bank teller/manager, Environmental Health and Safety Field Manager, salesperson, horse and rider trainer, training manager, a saved Christian, a care-giver for my disabled parents, a wife, a divorcee, a tough love sister, a generous friend. And very much like you...empty.
Fulfillment is starting to come from an animal care business...how is God wanting to use me now? I don’t know...but if I am the thread...I’ll hang around a little longer.
Here’s what you do...
find some thing new and different to do this weekend and DO IT
If you dont like that, try something else next weekend.
Eventually you will find something you love and spend all week looking forward to going to work every day so you can support your new found activity.
Wood working is good, so is gardening. I LOVE building things and making a beautiful landscape. Get some pictures of a world you would like to live in (a garden world) and make it happen
Your complaint (if I can cal it that) is that you are doing the same thing every day... so... do something different
Move to Arizona- you can go hiking in the desert
Just DO IT
DO YOU SMOKE POT???
IF YOU DO STOP (FOR 3 MONTHS)
Too much pot makes you feel exactly like this
And I am 100% for legalization.
You just can’t smoke all day every day (like I did 20 years ago)
You just explained my ex-boyfriend. I had always wondered where that nihilistic attitude came from.
Life is simply a set of problems and hurdles that we navigate around and for most of us the only legacy we leave behind is the collection of DNA we give to the next generation.
“Life is simply a set of problems and hurdles that we navigate around and for most of us the only legacy we leave behind is the collection of DNA we give to the next generation.”
Whereas the legacy of great men is that they set in motion a chain of events that affects the life of many, many people for years and years to come.
Strangely, though, that could just be through the way you raise your children so that they grow up to be great.
It’s hard to measure the overall impact a small thing may have on the world, but there have been plenty of movies made about it.
Cheers and thanks!
Indeed...who were Rush Limbaugh’s parents, how about Ronald Reagan’s or George Washington’s.
yeah I have talked a good half dozen people into quitting (at least long enough to clear their heads)
and the reaction is always the same
After 3 months they suddnly feel like they have ‘woken up’ after a long long sleep.
The pot stores in fatty brain cells (or something like that) and it take about 3 months to clear it from your system
I am NOT against legalization, but everything in moderation. If you drank alcohol for beakfast lunch and dinner and every night you would have problems with that too.
If I did not have a job that prevented it I would still occasionally partake- it is fun and makes you feel very creative and stops nausea when you are sick and stops hair loss.
But all day every day is bad bad bad!~! and messes you up big time
And don’t let your age get in the way of anything EVER
I was you age when I went back to college- worked my ass off on third shift WHILE doing two bachelors degrees during the day (and easy ones too! Physics and Computer Science)
I did not graduate until I was older than you are- I went from ‘going to work every day” to “I CANT WAIT TO GO TO WORK TOMORROW!!!” (I love my job~!!)
And I am 53 now and I tell my kids I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
I'm 62 now, retired at 55 after over 30 years with the same company, and finally drawing Social Security. I intend to get what I can while the getting is good.
I don't see how I was able to work as long as I did. I am never at a loss for something to do. My wife and I are looking forward to drier, warmer weather before heading out on a car tour of Arizona. Living in Kalifornia I really love breathing free air. I look forward to being able to go armed without a permit.
Hope you’re not planning on being out here in June...that’s when we have our “inversion” and all the smog from LA makes its way here :-)
No, we're aiming at early April. We're hoping to find a happy medium between the cold and the heat.
James-
I found this today, seems like the answer:
http://www.thatchristianwebsite.com/articles/abundantlife.html
JC
Hey, drama queen, how are you today?
So...what would you do if you had a million dollars?
All I can tell you is DON’T do anything stupid. It CAN and WILL get better.
I'd be pretty upset about such a pay cut.
"As long as they talk about you, you're not really dead, as long as they speak your name, you continue. A legend doesn't die, just because the man dies."
— from "A Game of Pool," by George Clayton Johnson, aired on The Twilight Zone, October 31, 1961
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