I sitting here listening to Pink Floyd when I damn well know I shouldn't.  Their music just sends me to odd places.  I never had needed drugs.  At my new job, the people I work with find it amazing that I don't have the urge to get out of the building at lunch.  We spend our day at the bench for hours, wrapping our brain around the nuances of viral infection.  I find it tiring.  I go to work exhausted some days, most days.  Yet, I don't need to go to the cafeteria to get away.  I think Terry Brooks said it best when he was talking about what it was like to be writer, he said that he really isn't all there.  As in, he spends large portions of his mental energy in his brain, creating, thinking, developing his craft, and only half paying attention to the people and places around him.  I can't say that I'm doing anything nearly that focused, but I can relate to the physical state.  I can be in the building and not in the building at the exact same moment.  I am concerned that this state comes with alarming frequency. 

I could go on about my mental state of late.  I won't bore you with the pointlessness.  The short, polite version is that I'm at a job where I know I need to learn things, where I know I will be moving on eventually and in such a manner to leave science entirely, and where I am grateful to have it considering the chaotic American dream we all have now.  I have found some sort of peace with it all.  I have staved off the restlessness-- for now. 

I've quit the volunteer job that I've had for three years and loved.  Today was my last day.   The day started with a death that I never got the story of.  (bad preposition, bad).  It ended with everyone so busy that I slipped of without much notice.  No one knew it was my last day. 

I had to do it because I came to realize that I had a hard time wanting to be there.  When I realized that my life was shifting in a new direction (or more to the point, I got my head out of my ass and looked around), that particular job no longer aligned.  That sounds so business-psych, but it's a reasonable description.  The work was no longer serving me and so I was no longer really serving it.  I did my best still.  I enjoyed the people and the patients, but I could no longer see the point, even though I had come to a trusted, respected, responsible position.  I had to end it.  I had promised to work through the year; the past Me would have fulfilled that out of obligation.  The person I am now, can't.  I put off the resignation letter until the last possible moment.

And now I sit here contemplating... what?  I have a relatively free summer ahead.  I have projects to do, both personal and family.  I cleaned out one of the two remaining boxes I dragged from my mother's house.  I found old pictures and minor things that hold a remembrance for me.  Things I couldn't put into the dumpster.  I feel like I'm on the edge of a vista, that there should be a glorious view ahead of me, except that the valley is filled with fog.  I do know what my plans are.  I have steps to take.  But I also find that my most pressing project is still me.  That I have to find my voice, or maybe not find it as much as use it.  Develop it. 

This is leading me into the topics that I could rant on about.  Topics where I have a voice and I don't use it: gay marriage, the current economy, the selfishness of the general population in regard to consumerism, convenience, and individualism to the point of absurdity, my overuse of the the word "of", the suburban life myth, the pointless fascination with celebrity, fame, fortune, my stomach and its fat deposit that my wii fit claims is 11 pounds.  Gah, I could go on. 

But I don't.  I have a therapist and I have to save something for her.  Instead I will tell you that I have written a story.  It is stark because as I wrote it, I realized that there was really only one point to tell and that was the story of him and her.  There are no names, there is no physical descriptions.  There is nothing beyond what is important and that is why she is there again and the things they say to each other.  Even that is kept to few specific words.  I think that is how life should be.  Stripped to only the important points.  More importantly, that's what I want.  That's what I'm going after (that and better word choice in writing, maybe a smaller butt). 

I'm here but not here, as it seems to be these days.  I could give the usual round of excuse/reasons but why bother?  It isn't that you aren't important or that my need to put my ideas out there isn't important.  The problem seems to be my inability to crystalize anything in my head.  I work and come home, all the time my brain has these concepts and ideas.  Part of this absence is to blame on work, just not the superficial part in that it takes up my time.  Deeper than that is how I have different, higher expectations laid on me and that has forced my brain to actually think again.  Many times before this I have said how my brain is not my friend.  It spends its time getting me diverted on ego trips or ego falls based on events that haven't actually happened.  When I realized what it was trying to do, the onslaught became worse even as I became stronger and developed self understanding.  Yet, it got what it wanted because I was still looking inward instead of living outward.  Of course, now that it has something functional to do in interpreting and analyzing data, perhaps it was just bored before.  Now it thinks about things like: what is the transmission rate of ideas, what does it take to believe, how does communication methods and language affect belief and ideas?  And I find that I want to know the answer to these things. 

There is a problem with this though.  The ideas that I have are still at the conceptual stage.  Complicating that is they are tied into issues of lifestyle and habits.  The more that I start thinking about these ideas and the problems that we have as a culture (I apologize for being so vague here.  I'm still trying to make sense of all this to myself), the more I realize that I can't be all cerebral about it and count myself outside of the problem.  So, I now question myself and my habits and what can be done.  I am ever the believer that for work to get done of any kind, it must start from the inside out.  And in order for any of that to happen, I need to sharpen the brain.  It works now more toward what I suppose is its intended purpose (rather than accost me with anxiety and doubt, hurray!), but I find that atrophy over years has caused damage.  Sloppy thinking, acceptance of what information I get without looking at it to see what it really means, or worse, what it hides, are habits that need to go.  To that end I've bought Unspeak by Stephen Poole, a book I've long since wanted to read, and a book on critical thinking processes, among many others I have in a pile on a variety of topics, though not all are so heavy weighted.

What does it all mean?  I have no idea.  I sense a shift, much like I did last year.  At that time, what I sensed was Change coming at full force.  I have been grateful to be given that warning and was able to act on if for all the things that happened.  (Don't be foolish and think I had a crystal ball, I didn't.  But that intuition gave me the grace I needed to be able to turn the bow into the wave).  Now, I think, is the continuation.  Change doesn't happen without reason.  I believe that last years changes are leading to a reordering of things now.  I don't know what those things are, but I do sense that work is required this time around rather than fluidity before.  I am doing my best to prepare for it.