I've been itching to get out of my own skin lately. It just feels like life is made up of only two things: work, and doing various things to ensure that I can live another day in order to work again. I have no excitement. I have no passion. I have no ambition. And, to make it worse, I don't even like my job.
I'm slowly starting to understand how it is that interesting, intelligent people like my father, get into his situation. I'm starting to understand why he stays home on most Friday nights, and why, for so many years, his work was his life, and vice versa.
I miss the passion for knowledge that I had when I was 18. I miss staying up for hours pouring over the documentation for some technology that I had just discovered and learning its every facet, not because I needed to, but because I wanted to. I miss the large group of people that would go together to the coffee house almost daily, to sit and talk and share and learn — or just be silly. I miss meeting new people. I miss being proud of myself and my accomplishments. I miss being excited about projects at work.
And now, aside from Jess, everything in my life seems stagnant. When Jess and I decide to have children, that'll add some more fire for a while. But, in the end, I'm sure I'll be back to where my father is… which is almost where I am now.
I need life in my life. And I don't mean that pseudo-life that most twenty- and thirty-somethings have: the life that brings them to bars or clubs every night of the week to drown their thoughts in alcohol and loud music while they look around the room and fantasize about the people they don't know and probably never will. I need connection. I need substance. I need knowledge. I need friendship.
I don't even know where to begin looking.
