Career Counseling on the 405

Between cutting people off and inching through gridlock, I alternate between L.A.'s Best Worst radio stations and Think.

I honestly wish I could do less Thinking in traffic. Productivity via cellphone was greatly reduced after I got a $145 ticket for driving on speaker phone. Without a connection to the outside world, being crammed between a MAC truck and a minivan, and watching my gas gauge slowly descend, my thoughts tend to stray to the demented, crazyface side of things. TrafficThinking is kind of like alcohol, if we were all angry drunks. Your thoughts go in circles, random tangents, but mostly downhill. Like being drunk, your emotions ebb and flow, but in traffic, they do so with the speed of the cars around you. "Are we going?!" (hope, happiness, excitement) "No." (sadness, depression).

Lately, I've spent my traffic time wondering what I'm going to do with my life (confusion, panic). I learned recently, that if you have the basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing, you're better off than 80% of the world's population. If you have ANY money on top of that, even if its just the change in your pocket, you're better off than 90% of the world's population. That puts me in the 10% of the worlds population that is most likely referred to as the Rich Bastard Selection by everyone else. One of the fortunate few financially, and born in a land and time where I personally face no persecution, oppression or discrimination. Quite the upper crust, by international standards.

My body and brain feel hardwired and geared to FIND A MATE, MAKE BABIES, but I have every opportunity to do something other than that and generations of people have worked, fought, and died for these privileges to be born to me. And believe me, I'm grateful! and I've tried to take full advantage, but recently, I feel as though I've reached a point where I have no direction, no goals, and man do I feel guilty about it. Am I letting everyone down by not knowing where to go from here?

To be fair, this is my first year of liberation from formal education. The first year where I have no classes filled with individual goals (assignments, grades) and no greater goal (graduation, further education). I no longer have peers, I have co-workers. Instead of grades, we have paychecks. We don't have to show up. We could just as easily go someplace else. Its all options and limitless opportunity. I'm at a restaurant with a 20 page menu, a credit card, and a rumbly tummy, but I have no idea what I want.

Since cluelessness is the one conclusion I can draw, for now I go through the motions. Work as much as possible. Fill the remainder of my schedule with as many interesting things as possible. Wait for inspiration to strike. I change the radio station yet again, try to avoid eye contact with the weirdo staring from the station wagon next to me, wait for my exit to creep up over the horizon, and I just... keep thinking....