Twenty-five years: end of the first physical quarter. Yearnings report.
Yesterday, at 23:20, I was on the pedals, coasting through quiet downtown. Minneapolis is not New York; Minneapolis, in fact, has a sound sleep schedule. It astounds me that, before midnight, I should pass only a few cars on my way through the heart of a city of 430,000. A light snow, phantasmal for its failing to stick, amplified the conspicuous quiet.
I am voluntarily unemployed, which is a sign both of great privilege and great unease. I've spend the time more leisurely than intended, but still, there has been plenty of reading, a touch of writing (you are here! 🎯), and underhurried job hunting.
I am a proper noncommittal mid-twenty-something, feeling obligated equally to ideals and economic stability and therefore random-walking between the two. (Hamming suggests, from the mathematics, that we can only approach the square root of our potential this way.) Just beyond the reach of my practical articulation something hovers, and buzzes: something about community, which depends on shared reality, which depends on biology and geography, which are mutually recursive binary functions of the very same. A system of two equations, both of bewildering, fascinating complexity.
The past few years of introspection are colored by fraught relationships with socialization and ambition. And little has changed about these relationships, perhaps throughout my life. I feel as unable as ever to maintain relationships, to be proactive, to reach outward. And, I feel as uncertain as ever about starting new endeavors, committing to deep, specific learning. I tell myself both will come; that interest and intimacy come organically or not at all. But the interim, kept open, invites self doubt to speak.
With it all, I am well. Thank you to all who have surrounded me hitherto.
Ancient,
Ty