Ok, I need to catch up my Harry Potter franchise consumption. I do like the books, for a variety of reasons. (1) Well written. (2) Fun. (3) Provide a cultural touchstone with essentially every child on earth and 75% of college students and some crotchety old people. (4) I like fantasy novels, always will; they are the trashy romance of my book lists. I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately, and reading those books takes me back to high school summers, when I am 98% sure I did not actually have any cares in the world. Seriously. No cares. Anyhow, I think I am caught up on the books (am I? I may not have read the latest slime green one … and I say that with respect to Mary GrandPre), but I do need to see at least two of the movies.
Additionally, Bleed American (I call it by the old title) by Jimmy Eat World is very nearly a perfect album. While I listened to all the old songs on it scattered about before, I finally listened to the songs in their album order and was blown away. Amazing - perfect summer cruising, Friday getting ready, or Monday pick me up album - can’t say that for many musical compliations.
I was going to say something else here. I think it might be that I will be researching chemistry and observing dentistry this summer. The blog will be pretty much saturated with dentistry for … possibly the rest of its existence. If all goes well. Fingers (toes!) are crossed; immature as that may be.
All humans are simmering pots of needs; every person you meet has a unique concoction of needs brewing. Take a baby, for instance: its needs overflow moment to moment in cascades of petulant tears. As that baby grows up, it does not stop literally crying out for things because it no longer want to, it stops because crying out no longer works, surrounded as it is in a sea of selfish people. Over the years, we learn to bottle up our needs, yet they continue to drive us from the inside out.
At this collegiate stage in life, I believe a particularly pressing need is one for direction. The happiest people I know are the ones who are sure of what they are doing: they know where they want to be, what they want to do, and most importantly, what they love to do.
I have a whole pile of things I like to do, but I have not yet been able to say “I love to do X” and follow that love. There are, of course, certain things that I am certain I will not do with my life. For example, if I got paid to look good, I’d be broke. Modelling is not something I love. Thing One removed from the list of Things I Could Be. I guess I chose my biochem path in order to be challenged and to feel that I had maximized my potential … though I know that playing piano for a living could have challenged me in an entirely different way. The second-guessing is frustrating.
It comes down to priorities, I think. You choose to do one thing or work one job in order to be able to do other things. It is the lucky person who gets a job in which they can do some of the things they like or even love within that job. Dentistry, provided I make it into dental school, will allow me to do something I like: get things exactly right. Get the fit of a person’s crown just so. Order, perfection within limits of the practical, cleanliness … all present day-in, day-out in the job I seek. But there’s an all important twist: the purpose to the high standards is helping people. By pursuing the ideal of flawlessness, I do not entertain people on stage (as I would playing piano), but I make their lives better by allowing them to chew, to talk, to live without pain.
I’m just trying to reason this Life Thing out, like most of you, I think.
