A couple of posts ago (here) I reference a post from five and a half years ago (here) where I tell a story about realizing, not long after leaving graduate school, that I could afford to jettison the whole school-based model I had developed for how to relate to other people and the world.
And I discovered today that Zach Weinersmith already said the exact same thing years ago too -- except he was much funnier, of course. You can find the official cartoon here.
A little over three years ago, I wrote this post here explaining why I've always found it hard to articulate professional goals: namely, that I just don't believe in any of the work I'm actually doing. Somehow my heart of hearts still thinks I'm just on vacation and any day now I'm going back to Academia. (This means my heart of hearts is pretty stupid, for the record.)
Why am I thinking about this now? You'd think it's because I am unemployed (March 31 was my Last Day Worked), but no -- that's not it. Actually it's because I was killing time recently by reading old articles from The Last Psychiatrist, and I stumbled across this one: The Last Psychiatrist: The Near Death Of A Salesman.
Right now I don't want to talk about how much I resemble the character he describes in this fiction: yes, I don't eat as well as I should; and yes, I'm really out of shape. I don't listen to talk radio, so there's that.
No, the part that hit me like a locomotive was three sentences in the middle of the third paragraph:
And this wasn't his real life, anyway, he was still planning his real life. He was 47-- three years of youth left. Three years to get his real life started.
That's what TLP's post is really about, anyway. The delusion that any of us might have a "real life" somewhere out there in another dimension that's different from the life we actually lead day-to-day.
Of course, it's not like I ever believed that. Not really. Besides, I'm not 47. That was back when I started the blog, more or less. (Not quite, but close enough.)
Trying too hard? Yeah, I thought so too. But if I suffer from the same narcissistic delusion as this moron, the salesman in this story … well, … I mean ….
Well shit, that sucks. Sure wish it weren't true.
