15 Megs of Fame




Diaryland is da bomb I just *have* to tell you how much this all sucks. Who're these other people he's writing about? Who's the freak writing this, anyway? What's gone before. What's going on right now? Where do *you* visit on the web? What're you building right now?


New! Search this site:



Subscribe to the notify list for announcements of updates and changes




Buy Blue


Make me a friend on Twitter.





Another smart-assed remark from Mike
Speed bumps
19:00:00 on 2006-11-13

I had forgotten about the speed bumps you have with antidepressants. Today I'm having a bump.

I am in a very sad mood. Not a down mood, just sad. It's akin to the difference between needing an engine overhaul in your car versus just hesitating because of crappy gasoline bought at a no-name station in deep East Texas. Sad will pass with time. "Down" doesn't, necessarily.

Nonetheless, it came into its own over the weekend at the estate sale for many of my mother's things. Many times I wanted to reach out to the table where sales were being made and say, "sorry, that's not for sale," but that's ridiculous. It's just things, but I never realized there'd be so many memories attached to those things.

It also didn't help that family members were around, by necessity — moral support and all that rot. The normal mindless chit-chat was really wearing on me, and they don't seem to appreciate that I am resistant to the normal twenty questions treatment that I mete out because I'm not a big conversationalist, anyway, much less with people to whom I have nothing to say. Instead of questions about school, it's questions about work and where do we live now and all that rot. What do you care? is all I could think the whole time.

However, as my family gets older, more and more people are retired. Some close but rarely-seen relatives who live in Pasadena (well, they used to, I don't know where they live now. What do I care?) were there buying some things from the sale, and my grandmother said, "the way they spend money, they must have a good retirement."

Things like that and my father always spendin' Gs like they're going out of style trigger worries in me about our own retirement. Here Marilynn and I are, mid-thirties, and we don't have money saved (to speak of). We're making a decent living and doing some saving, but in reality, we only have a few thousand dollars saved at best. What becomes of us as we get older? What's worse, it's perhaps not even as we get older, but as we have more health consequences of our lives. I don't know if I ever have any hope of being a healthy weight, and I worry about Marilynn's diabetes getting out of control.

I know I shouldn't worry about what will become of us. We're doing fine financially, and we're trying to put together a better future for ourselves. We're both socking away money in our retirement accounts (at least, what they match). We're paying attention to our money and where it goes and trying to save more, and not spending every dollar we make (like we used to). I keep hoping that one day we get things at home in order so we can start doing something to make extra money (after all, the best way to make money is to start your own business).

But I do worry. I worry, very much.


I think I know what's precipitated this feeling. Like many people, I occasionally go dig around on search engines and other sites to keep tabs about old friends and acquaintances, and recently I dug around about information on someone I went to high school with. There wasn't too much of an internet footprint, but what existed was interesting.

This person got their PhD in chemical engineering a few years ago. They are working at a major biotech firm in the Bay Area. Said person been quoted in a couple news articles, although it was about breaking into the business after grad school than for what this person is working on. It's the start of a promising career that will surely lead to good things.

I think about the future I saw before me when I was in high school: undergrad degree in physics, get my PhD, career in research (and teaching... yuck!). I had a professor that had a talk he gave to his classes in college, that there's only two reasons to study physics, really: either you want to earn big bucks (EBB) or win a Nobel Prize (WNP). He sized you up based on if you were an EBB or a WNP. I thought I was a WNP. For a long time after I let things really start to unravel, I still thought I was a WNP, I just had to fix the problems.

Instead, I let it all drift away in a cloud of depression. I feel like a failure when I consider my life in those terms, even though I have a wonderful wife, we live in a nice house and I have a respectable job (even if I don't like it). I guess, in short, I don't feel like I lived up to my expectations of myself or my potential, and now I worry that I won't even measure up to a less grandiose, "normal" idea of what my life should be.


An understanding of where you've been is instrumental to figuring out where you would like to go. The problem is, I don't know where that is. In lieu of a real destination, I am trying to plan for a normal life, with retirement and wanting all the things that goes with it. You know, joining an RV club and driving between Indian casino and the campground near the national park, and visiting... well, whoever. To do that you have retirement income and your house paid off and a nest egg, but also you've generally been that suburban guy who putters around in his garage and goes to his nine-to-five and works so that he has a few meager hours with the family and keeps food on the table.

I just want to do tech, but when you do an analysis of what I am... I'm frighteningly close to that guy already.

Will I be able to live with myself if I never do something noteworthy? Does everybody go through this, and if so, are you being pragmatic when you finally accept normality, or are you settling or selling out?

restlessmind


Ancient history:
2013-03-01"You'll be stone dead in a moment!"
2007-08-07I covet fuck you money
2007-07-16My own long, dark tea-time of the soul
2007-07-11My internet experience is lacking
2007-07-10Coincidence



<< Before nowAfter now >>