Well, actually, can't sleep, slept in until midday and haven't moved more than 50 feet all day.
So, I've been chatting to
green_amber about depression and direction and life. And I'd been chatting to Sana earlier about the same thing. And eventually something managed to click, even in my disease-fogged brain:
At some point in our lives we stop drifting onwards in a perpetual daze and ask "Where am I going?" Some people first do that between 30 and 50, at which point it's probably a mid-life crisis. Some people do it at 70, at which point it's a second lease of life, and some people do it at 16, at which point it's a bit bloody annoying because it can derail the nice simple bits you're _supposed_ to drift through.
Sana, for instance, did it during her first year at uni, suddenly realising that the degree she'd been 'going to do' for so long wasn't actually what she wanted at all. I did it just a little later than that, wondering why I'd done a degree. Erin's doing it now, trying to find an answer that'll make it all worthwhile.
When I said to Lilian that Sana wanted to find the _right thing_ before going back to Uni, she laughed at me (or would have done, if we hadn't been on MSN at the time) and said:
Uni is not a straight path to what you do.
It's barely the start.
Is she any more likely to find out what she wants to do in a crap job in Edinburgh?
Which reminded me of something that
purelyskindeep once said - you don't need to necessarily be moving in the 'right' direction, so long as you keep moving from time to time. If you keep trying new things eventually you'll find one you want to do. I was lucky, I found mine back in 1982 when my parents bought a BBC model B Microcomputer. but it wasn't a plan, it was just plain dumb luck that I found something I loved, it brought me into an industry that happened to be something that pays fairly well and that I happened to be good at it.
Somewhere out there is something you want to do. You can sit there for ever, trying to work it out and never be sure what that thing is. Or you can get out there and try things until you find it.
In the meantime - when did you first ask the question "Where am I going?"