To me, a good friend is the kind that really makes you (me) think. When I say think I mean really, really think - more often than not, thinking that makes you realize that you're sort of an idiot - either through making you realize how good you've got it or making you realize how lazy you've gotten. I recently had a just such a conversation with just such a friend, and now I sit befuddled and clogged with thoughts and wild words.
Ever since I graduated from college I have been scattered. The friend I just spoke with rambled tangentially for at least half an hour on his passion - the achievement gap - and while he did so, I couldn't help but listen to his latest frustrations and revelations about how he wants to make a direct impact and wonder if I still take the time to put my life in that perspective. My brain spins way back to a seminar I took in school called 'the ethics and excellence of leadership.' Now I'm left to wonder if I've been focusing so much on the ethics that I've forgotten about the excellence - the part where you concentrate deeply on being innovative, where you focus on yourself to make yourself a better tool for whatever purpose you wish to serve, where you focus on others to make your physical presence more real and more grounded.
I feel as if I have been a broken record for the last three years and now I've hit the point where push comes to shove and I have to say (or better yet, do) something real. Sometimes I think I'll vomit if I hear the phrases 'food justice' or 'food desert' or 'job creation' or 'urban agriculture' EVER AGAIN. I don't mean to imply that any of these concepts are bad, just that I have fallen victim to being seduced by the buzzwords. To an extent I'm aware of my own naivete (as aware as one can be), and given that I know my tendency to fall for concepts and fall short of facts. Am I actually interested in this? Am I just rolling with the punches because I already started down this food and farm path?
Logically, I know this is it. I know. I am not an angry person, and my absolute rage in response to graduate school is perhaps one of the truer indications of my bigger purpose that I've ever experienced. I saw and felt how much was wrong with the perspectives I was being taught (with a mind towards agriculture, of course), and knowing that I did not want to learn about ag that way meant that I had to leave - and I did, and I know in my bones that it was the best thing I've done for myself.
The rationale is there, but the actions are not. I know from these thoughts, and not from experience, that this discipline is the right one for me. However, I'm confronted with so many potentially powerful factors right now. I am in a new place (but still in the south), I have access to plenty of urbane agricultural resources, I have time, I have this immensely valuable experience in Goldsboro to draw on. BUT: I am stagnant. My interests fundamentally have no job description attached, no graduate program to be 'certified', and that means that I must create a structure of my own to follow, seek out the skills I want to gain independently, work towards these bigger goals in my free time, create a social network in a brand new place that will get me moving in the desired direction. I feel as if I am standing at the edge of a cliff; behind me are those who fit neatly into categories and boxes, going about their business; jumping off the cliff are those with the motivation, the wherewithal, the visceral drive to forge their own paths, practically building their parachutes as they fall out of all the wrong materials and absolutely determined to make it work. And then there's me: some urge me away from the edge, and no one can take that plunge but me, but man! is it ever scary! I don't know anything about parachutes, much less what I want my parachute to look like or how I will make it. Am I plunger or a box-fitter? Right now is the time when I gather up those materials to make the parachute, but I don't know what I'll need since I don't know what it should look like. What's holding me back from figuring it out - fear, stupidity, laziness?
I worry that I want to be bigger than I actually am.
I worry that the calluses I've gotten from shoveling have been from just that - shoveling - and nothing of more consequence. How do I get the other kinds of calluses - not the physical ones, but the ones you earn from thinking? The image that comes to my head is that of laugh and worry lines; they rarely happen without one another, but having the latter means you've earned the joy of having the former.
How do you give yourself a structure when you don't know what it needs to work toward?
Ever since I graduated from college I have been scattered. The friend I just spoke with rambled tangentially for at least half an hour on his passion - the achievement gap - and while he did so, I couldn't help but listen to his latest frustrations and revelations about how he wants to make a direct impact and wonder if I still take the time to put my life in that perspective. My brain spins way back to a seminar I took in school called 'the ethics and excellence of leadership.' Now I'm left to wonder if I've been focusing so much on the ethics that I've forgotten about the excellence - the part where you concentrate deeply on being innovative, where you focus on yourself to make yourself a better tool for whatever purpose you wish to serve, where you focus on others to make your physical presence more real and more grounded.
I feel as if I have been a broken record for the last three years and now I've hit the point where push comes to shove and I have to say (or better yet, do) something real. Sometimes I think I'll vomit if I hear the phrases 'food justice' or 'food desert' or 'job creation' or 'urban agriculture' EVER AGAIN. I don't mean to imply that any of these concepts are bad, just that I have fallen victim to being seduced by the buzzwords. To an extent I'm aware of my own naivete (as aware as one can be), and given that I know my tendency to fall for concepts and fall short of facts. Am I actually interested in this? Am I just rolling with the punches because I already started down this food and farm path?
Logically, I know this is it. I know. I am not an angry person, and my absolute rage in response to graduate school is perhaps one of the truer indications of my bigger purpose that I've ever experienced. I saw and felt how much was wrong with the perspectives I was being taught (with a mind towards agriculture, of course), and knowing that I did not want to learn about ag that way meant that I had to leave - and I did, and I know in my bones that it was the best thing I've done for myself.
The rationale is there, but the actions are not. I know from these thoughts, and not from experience, that this discipline is the right one for me. However, I'm confronted with so many potentially powerful factors right now. I am in a new place (but still in the south), I have access to plenty of urbane agricultural resources, I have time, I have this immensely valuable experience in Goldsboro to draw on. BUT: I am stagnant. My interests fundamentally have no job description attached, no graduate program to be 'certified', and that means that I must create a structure of my own to follow, seek out the skills I want to gain independently, work towards these bigger goals in my free time, create a social network in a brand new place that will get me moving in the desired direction. I feel as if I am standing at the edge of a cliff; behind me are those who fit neatly into categories and boxes, going about their business; jumping off the cliff are those with the motivation, the wherewithal, the visceral drive to forge their own paths, practically building their parachutes as they fall out of all the wrong materials and absolutely determined to make it work. And then there's me: some urge me away from the edge, and no one can take that plunge but me, but man! is it ever scary! I don't know anything about parachutes, much less what I want my parachute to look like or how I will make it. Am I plunger or a box-fitter? Right now is the time when I gather up those materials to make the parachute, but I don't know what I'll need since I don't know what it should look like. What's holding me back from figuring it out - fear, stupidity, laziness?
I worry that I want to be bigger than I actually am.
I worry that the calluses I've gotten from shoveling have been from just that - shoveling - and nothing of more consequence. How do I get the other kinds of calluses - not the physical ones, but the ones you earn from thinking? The image that comes to my head is that of laugh and worry lines; they rarely happen without one another, but having the latter means you've earned the joy of having the former.
How do you give yourself a structure when you don't know what it needs to work toward?
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