Where Am I?

So often lately, I'm hung up on wondering if I'm in the right place.

Like today, I caught myself just staring at the wallpaper on my computer screen for several minutes on end. I'm distracted, but by what? I'm not even sure. I like my work enough, but it's not keeping my attention right now. And I wonder if there are jobs you never tire of? I wonder if even the heart surgeon or the concert pianist ever just wish they could try something else for a while. Do arteries and notes get old? Or, do you just get better at saving and touching lives without stopping to ask yourself if you're in the right place?

Is liking your job and loving what it affords you good enough? Is pushing forward with something because it's right going to sustain you through those hard times? I wonder. I want to think that this step is just one before something even better. After all, the last one was. I want to think that finding a balance between my life as a professional and an academic* and my undeniable desire to become a beach bum is a goal worth working toward. But I also want to know that it's possible. I want to love all those roles equally, yet for completely different reasons.

And through it all, I want to keep faith. I want to be able to feel that this balance and this striving is really just a small task compared to what may come. I want to feel like trying to figure out how all these pieces fit together is just part of building a better foundation for later.

That, I suppose, is the most difficult admission for me because it is hard to keep faith; this may be the one case in life in which I am not a quick study. I want something more but I want the reassurance that what I feel is right, really is.

I'm trying. I remind myself often that life and decisions may loom over me constantly but it doesn't mean I have to figure it all out right now. The times I feel like I'm not doing enough, I have to remember that maybe I am. Maybe just sitting here, staring into space, is enough for the moment. It's not a waste, it's just a few minutes to sit with myself and dig up that faith that's been buried by confusion and change.

I don't know how to tell if I'm in the right place, heading in the right direction. I don't know what kind of impact the decisions I make today are going to have on tomorrow, or next week, or next year. I have no idea how to see what's around the corner from now, but I'm just hoping that right here might be as good a place as any to start to look.

*I think calling myself an academic seems quite presumptuous. However, it seems I'm past the age of calling myself a student and still too young to be a scholar. So academic it is.