Skyscraper

28/01/12
Last post I said I had regained this time zone, but I wasn’t sure: I’ve had trouble sleeping.

My standard schedule here is heavily influenced by the sun. In summer, I can drop off around one am and rise and shine fully rested around six in the morning, maybe earlier. During the winter, the trend reverses, and being in darkness extends my slumber well into ten or eleven, even if I break my ritual and nod off at ten. Norway will slowly siphon off my lifeblood if I were to habitate here over the long term, regardless of other benefits. I used to think that this difference was caused externally, and so I could correct for it by ignoring or countering the external influence, but oh, how long it takes to feel woken up when it is dark outside versus light! Combine this with crossing the twenty five year mark, and my stats are dropping, sports fans. My rookie card is not a hot commodity.

My new determination is that this has to do with stress. My master’s degree is ending, and along with it my visa. I acknowledged early on that this degree would primarily enable me to stay in Norway for two years, and that’s precisely what I got. However, the idea of a career was still a distant cloud in my sky (and it wasn’t even laughing). What job requires a master’s in English over a Bachelor’s? PhD candidate?

Additionally Lubka and I were going through some troubles and reacted in a way that exacerbated them. We both had outside factors influencing our attitudes: mine was turning into my very real pressing need for a career path, and staying in Europe looked like a whole long line of struggling for jobs, hours, and money.

Once again, Marie came to my rescue. Her toothless insistence that I pursue law (or rather, her as she navigates her own life which happens to include going through law school) left deeper and deeper marks as I looked into it. A career not dissimilar to what I was doing, on its fundamentals at least, and would not be short on hours or money, or creative solutions and intellectual stimulation, for that matter.
I’m sure my visit to D.C. has bored many people, both before and after the fact. All I can come down on certainly is that researching gives me opinions, and the new information has been mined. I stll don’t feel frightened of it. I can study anything for three years, and the questions that remain, I can’t answer. Will I get in? Will I like it? Will I get a job afterwards? Will I be fulfilled? How, on the basis of the changes wrought upon myself in the last six years, indeed in the last two, how can I project with any certainty what I will want in forty years, what I will feel proud of and regretful towards and attempt to match that reliability with steps of action now? Especially ones so irreversible – I’ve always said I like to keep my options open.

The conclusion that I ultimately came to is that these questions are irrelevant. The reason that they matter is due to their impossibility. I wasn’t balking at a possible ‘No’ answer so much as I was the attempt to arrive at an answer I felt I could trust (which, really, was a condition of answering them). The thing is, they’re not dependent on law, but dependent on me. Law doesn’t raise them, I do. So law won’t answer them, I will.

I realized later I had another problem with my approach. Asking these sorts of questions presumes that my career must give me such returns for the valuable investment of my life. I was supposing that there was some correlation that had to be present between work and payout, although I know this from personal experience to be untrue. It began sounding like a structural game put on by the world, and I was trying to be a savvy player when my hand was inevitably being forced. However, I realized another option was to not get a career at all, just be a bum, and this make it obvious to me that there was no global game, just custom. A career isn’t some path designed for you, it’s more constructive. A career is an amalgamation of work experience, deals agreed to for set times, and essentially that you can make of the working environment. A career isn’t driving a road, but seeing where you can get to by driving down that road. Law isn’t a condemnation, it’s a determined effort to build a skyscraper.

So I bought a one way ticket to Japan. Yes, the adventure continues. It’s also a financially sound venture, and will require of me a sustained extroversion in a style I am not familiar with. Middle school english instruction will be new, I may lean on my friends ever so slightly (Jami Jami Jami hey!). But I will study for the LSAT and take it in the Land of the Rising Sun. And then (and here’s the real kicker) me and my Bublinka will rendez-vous stateside. And we’re talking long term. Talk about changes in the last two years, eh?

There’s a lot to fear with this plan, and I haven’t really answered the questions I had. Just because they’re irrelevant doesn’t mean I don’t still worry about them, apprehensively plan for them, try to work towards them. But lordy, is it good to have a plan! Sleep well, sports fans.
-Schuyler

Summation of the Action: Probably working towards #37, the money one, but not looking at it that way. Also, during this japanese year, I WILL visit Syndey and try to make Wellington, which will make 5/7, and #9e, the continent one. Also also, three scenes from the end. Look for #6a, the book, to be available for reading real soon.