Steam
Everyday, I want to become better, but I don’t mean that in a small way. I want to be wholly… Faster. Smarter. Nicer. Stronger. More imaginative. Pursuing these ideals drives me, like the fire drives the steam engine, from the inside. This all worked for me, back when I showed up to a job and then went home at peace… I pursued my own goals and reached for the gold rings that I put in front of me.
But now, in school, there’s something external that everyday tells me I must be smarter, faster, better — and if I’m not, someone will get hurt. This produces a toxic tension: I want to improve upon a bunch of pieces of me while they want me to improve on but a few.
I can’t satisfy myself and them. And it drives me crazy.
Comments
Sis Meech +1
You can do it. Just keep on keeping on. To quote Dory: “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming …” :)
Dan McKeown
This has little to nothing to do with your post, but I heard this broadcast of The Story on NPR the other night and thought you would find it interesting:
http://thestory.org/archive/search_media?review_state=published&start.query:record:list:date=2010-01-11%2023%3A59%3A59&start.range:record=max&end.query:record:list:date=2010-01-11%2000%3A00%3A00&end.range:record=min&month:int=1&year:int=2010
The second story deals with this professor who went in search of these Japanese American photographers from pre-WWII. They have posted four of the pictures on the website that I linked to above and knowing your enthusiasm for photography I thought you would at least find the story intriguing. A lot of their work would have been lost if this guy had not tracked them down.
The one of the man on the dam is stunning.
Alexander Micek
Katy — I think of your quote each day as I’m pedaling up Franklin through the snow. Soon, pedaling and swimming will become synonymous (both in the literal and figurative sense) in my head.
Dan — after fixing my URL detection regexp (so your link worked… sorry about that!), I checked out that link. Woah!
I always think it’s interesting to see that artistic styles were mastered before many thought they even existed. Some people think that close-cropped pictures of ephemeral moments in daily life arose only in the past few years, paralleling the advent of inexpensive photography.
In this case, that style of photography was used with great results… 80 years before the digital camera (and the reemergence of this style).
Also: The Story rocks.