at last

i have sat at this particular window staring at it a number of times over the past months thinking that i should update. i have even chosen titles, written sentences only to delete them and move on to something else. i think the failure to write is a dual battle: i) how to write something about my life that my 'audience' will both understand and not find over-dramatice and ii) write something that really gets at where my thoughts have been.

in essence, in the last few months i have reconsidered life. not whether or not to keep living but instead what kind of a life i want to lead. most of this has been centred around vocation which is an all-consuming and brutal struggle. in essence, i am not completely happy in my current course work. i find the difficulty of writing focused and well-documented chapters for my dissertation tedious and overwhelming. i know that this is not what i want to do for the rest of my life. to know that i can not come home and put the tele on and not know that there is more books i should read, more articles to write and all the rest of it. i need to find something i am motivated to do and also something that i am passionate about. i want something i am energised about.

however, i'm not sure what that next step is and do not feel i have a strong enough grasp on where this next change will take me. and so, i have decided to stay on track- to a certain degree- and will continue on towards my d. phil. but i will use these next two years to truly get at what i'm good at and what it is i want to do next. journalism? canadian literature? management? administration? theatre? a boy band? it is both deeply liberating and deeply disarming to think what lies ahead...

and yet in all this postulating, the normal rhythms of life continue- there was a show (finishes this week), welfare crises in college, nights out, nights in, great dinners, fantastic conversations and not enough time spent in the bath, on the couch or with my friends. and so things have been both normal and not. regularity in a time that is deeply strange.

there has been much else in the past months that has amused and angered me. the reality that canada is becoming america in its obsession with public accounts ($12 for a roll of cello tape!!!- people there are costs to govern, honestly!); that integrity in government is a bad pr strategy (poor paul martin?); that racial inequality is as strong as ever in britain (there are 70 black students at cambridge); that i miss home (especially with a new little person arriving this week); that i love my flat (what a difference table clothes make); that i can be happy even in my fog...

more soon...