Big points if you know what TV show gave me the quote in the title. Bigger points if you can even name the episode without Googling it.
No introduction or anything tonight. I guess I don't have much to say before I get to...
Today's Topic: Passion
What is passion? "Passion" can be defined a lot of different ways. The first thing that pops into one's mind when you think about passion is probably passion for a person. It's why we fall in love, get married, make babies, grow old together, yadda yadda. That's the easy part. It gets a bit harder, but not impossible, when you're talking about passion for a thing: think about passion for cars or your favorite sports team. Then you get to the point where you're talking about passion for an idea or a cause or an abstract principle, and this, I think, can be the hardest type of passion to really understand.
Here's why I started thinking about this: On Thursday, I attended a recruiting event for a local business that has put together a web tool allowing businesses to track their resource usage across time. It's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, there were two things that may have killed my opportunity to get an internship with them (aside from the fact that it turns out they're looking for someone for the spring and not the summer like I expected):
1) I showed up late. This is because a) I'm always late, and b) I was expecting something different. I was expecting this to just be an informal meet 'n' greet session where you could come in, meet the business owner, ask some questions, do some networking, etc. To me, that meant "drop by when you get a chance." Instead, what I got was an actual formal presentation. So under my mistaken impression, I started wandering towards the event just as it was supposed to start. Then I ran into Sara and talked to her for a few minutes. At the end of that conversation, I mentioned where I was going, and she says, "Oh, then you better get in there, because the guy running it just lectured everyone about being on time." Shit.
2) I left early. This is not my fault. I looked at my phone and realized it was 12:56, and that I needed to be in my TA class in a mere four minutes. So I asked a quick question, told the guy I had to get to class, and ran off. What else was I supposed to do? I had to work. If it were just one of my own classes I wouldn't have cared about showing up late, but I kind of have responsibilities here. Hopefully he realized that.
But what was more concerning to me was his comment early on about passion. This guy encouraged us to ask questions about the company and the web tool, because, he said, "asking good questions shows you have passion, and I'll remember that, because we're only looking for people with a lot of passion for what we're doing."
Hmmm.
This poses two problems: First, I don't come up with questions very readily. You give me a presentation like this and I'll go, "Huh, that's neat." Then I'll come up with ten questions over the next two days and send them to you in an e-mail. But when I'm in the midst of things, I just don't think of questions very easily.
More importantly, though, is the idea that I have to find a way to show passion. This I don't know how to do. Or at least I don't think I do. Especially when it comes to abstract concepts that might underlie a project such as this. Look: I am not by nature a passionate person. Or at least I'm not an outwardly passionate person. It takes a lot to get me riled up about something, either in a good or a bad way. Most of the time I just sit there stoically and observe what's going on around me. I have a hard time getting passionate about something unless I make it personal.
Therein may lie the problem. I envy people who seem to have discovered their calling early in life. I feel like I'm surrounded by people who have found causes (the aforementioned abstract principlese) and are energized to go out and change the world because of this. Me? I've had to work at it. Hard. And I'm still not 100% sure that I've found it. Even if I have, my problem is that, not being a passionate person by nature, I have a hard time being "passionate" about the abstract principles I support. I put that in quotes because passion is relative, and the way that each person shows that passion is very different. Mine is an intellectual passion. I care more about affecting the underlying structures that have put us on an unsustainable path than I do about the "sexy" things that I (and by extension, everyone else) take as more visible signs of passion. Composting? Yeah. Sure. You go out and you do that. Meanwhile, I'm going to work on the big things, like finding the mix of regulations and economic incentives that effect worldwide structures and will lead to the end of pollution, smarter urban growth, and better energy systems so that living sustainably just becomes automatic because it just doesn't make sense to do anything differently.
So my problem, then, is that I care about the background, the things going on behind the scenes, the intersection between power, policy, politics, and economics that conspire to put us on a road to destruction. This is inherently un-sexy, and I find it difficult how to show passion about regulations and global climate treaties, at least in the way that the activist-types can show passion.
So how exactly do I show this "passion" to prospective employers? I have this gonzo image of imitating John Cusack in "Say Anything" by standing outside some company's office holding an iPod over my head while playing "An Inconvenient Truth." Otherwise, I'm at a bit of a loss. Tonight I spent two hours trying to tell the IU Office of Sustainability why I want an internship with them, and then threw what I wrote in the garbage because it sucked. That has a lot to do with having trouble putting my thoughts into words, but it also gets to a basic inability to express what I care about in a way I think would be interesting to others. But the bottom line is that I feel like my personality and my particular intellectual interests are difficult to express in a passionate way, and I'm afraid that's putting me at a disadvantage.
Or it could be that I'm overthinking the whole thing again. Yeah, that may be it.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Welcome to My Blog. Today's Topic: On Getting Older
Yeah, so...here is my blog. I have decided to join the early 21st century and let other people know the thoughts running through my head, even if they don't really want to. I don't know what's going to go in here. I imagine you'll hear lots about my grad school experience here at Indiana University and ramblings about anything else that happens to be going on in my life at any given moment. Or just completely random thoughts about what I see going on around me.
Unfortunately today my mind is trying to get the better of me, and it's been winning most of the day. I hate it when that happens. I'm probably just tired. We're 1.5 weeks into the new semester and I'm already playing catch-up. This is because I agonized all of last week on an assignment for my Environmental Economics class, ignoring first-week readings, etc....only to give up at the last minute and drop the class. Oy. I still don't know for sure if I made the right decision. I think I did, for now, but I wonder if I hadn't gotten so stressed over it, maybe I could have made it through and I'd be okay. I'm disappointed because I put so much effort into it, and was really excited about the class, and it turned out I just couldn't cut it. But it's too late now; now I just have to accept it and move on. It's going to play havoc with my schedule all semester, but whatever. I'll deal.
There are other things on my mind that I don't particularly feel like discussing. Instead, I will get to the topic that's been bouncing around my head the last couple of days:
On Getting Older
In a mere two months I will be 31 years old. I believe it was '60s counterculture icon Abbie Hoffman who said, "Never trust anyone over 30." I guess that means you have roughly sixty days left until I become completely untrustworthy. As if I wasn't already.
Every once in a while I get what I consider reminders that I'm not quite as young as I used to be. A couple of months ago, I found out I was actually older than one and possibly two of my professors. What's more, one of those claimed she was in the midst of a mid-life crisis. That didn't leave me much hope. A lot of the time it comes when I look at my hairline. I always promised that when my male pattern baldness became too noticeable, I would take the dignified way out and just shave it all off (again). I feel that day may not be too far off. It comes to me when I look around and see a bunch of 20-somethings (and younger) walking around, making googly eyes at each other, and it reminds me again that I'm in my early 30s and have not settled down yet. That's probably when I feel the worst. Let's not go there. And did I mention I quit a secure, well-enough-paying job with great benefits and traded it in for a career change to I don't know what and many thousands of dollars of debt?
A very close second is when some physical activity that used to be easy becomes just a bit more difficult. Sunday was a good case in point. I play basketball a lot. I don't know that I'm very good, but I enjoy it. I make my shots, make a few good passes, and try to play good defense. Sunday I don't know that I did any of those particularly well. This may or may not be partially attributable to injuring my ankle fairly early on. I went up for a shot and came down on someone's foot. I still don't know the extent of the damage, but will try to find out in the morning. I'm thinking it may just be sprained, but the swelling and lingering pain makes me think it would be a good idea to get it checked out.
(Tanget: I guess the best course of action would have been to quit then. But like any good male eager to prove his worth, I kept going, which was probably stupid. Hey, I didn't think it was that bad. It's like that seen in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where King Arthur runs up against that angry knight who keeps fighting despite Arthur chopping off his limbs one by one, and when he has no more limbs, finally declares the fight a draw. "Dude, you all right? Your ankle looks pretty bad." "Nah, I'm fine, let's keep going." "Seriously, dude, you're foot should not be bent that way." "It's just a flesh wound, c'mon, let's keep playing." "Okay, whatever.")
Regardless of the reason, I felt like I got winded before anyone else, all but perhaps one of whom were younger than me. This seems to happen more and more lately. Back in the day, even a couple years ago, I would play in my rec league at work, and we'd all have to play a full forty minutes since we were short-handed. We'd play the whole game, and at the end, I'd look around at everyone with their hands on their knees, sucking wind, and go, "C'mon, you're not tired already, are you?" I don't think I could do that anymore. Nowadays, I'm the one sucking wind, going, "Give me a minute here." It's not like I'm out of shape or anything; it's just that doing what I used to do has gotten that much harder. What used to be easy at 28 is no longer so easy at almost-31. I could hike to the top of a tall hill now and feel more out-of-breath than I would have a couple of years ago. That mile run that used to take 7.5 minutes now takes more like eight. Little things.
This bothers me in a vague way. It tells me that age is starting to creep up on me; it's a portent to the days when perhaps I won't be able to get physical at all, and that's the scary part. Part of me believes my body will eventually betray me, and if it does, I hope it does in one fell swoop, where I can lay there looking up at the sky and think to myself, "Well, at least I didn't fall apart piece by piece." Maybe that's what I'm really afraid of: getting old slowly and realizing that the things I used to do in my youth are impossible now. It could also be that I'm coming back to the pack, regressing towards the mean. Despite being rail-thin, I've always been active and had great endurance. Maybe now that I'm slipping a bit in that regard, I'm just becoming more like everyone else. Who knows.
One thing I do know: I could still take you. All of you. So don't mess with me. 'Kay?
Unfortunately today my mind is trying to get the better of me, and it's been winning most of the day. I hate it when that happens. I'm probably just tired. We're 1.5 weeks into the new semester and I'm already playing catch-up. This is because I agonized all of last week on an assignment for my Environmental Economics class, ignoring first-week readings, etc....only to give up at the last minute and drop the class. Oy. I still don't know for sure if I made the right decision. I think I did, for now, but I wonder if I hadn't gotten so stressed over it, maybe I could have made it through and I'd be okay. I'm disappointed because I put so much effort into it, and was really excited about the class, and it turned out I just couldn't cut it. But it's too late now; now I just have to accept it and move on. It's going to play havoc with my schedule all semester, but whatever. I'll deal.
There are other things on my mind that I don't particularly feel like discussing. Instead, I will get to the topic that's been bouncing around my head the last couple of days:
On Getting Older
In a mere two months I will be 31 years old. I believe it was '60s counterculture icon Abbie Hoffman who said, "Never trust anyone over 30." I guess that means you have roughly sixty days left until I become completely untrustworthy. As if I wasn't already.
Every once in a while I get what I consider reminders that I'm not quite as young as I used to be. A couple of months ago, I found out I was actually older than one and possibly two of my professors. What's more, one of those claimed she was in the midst of a mid-life crisis. That didn't leave me much hope. A lot of the time it comes when I look at my hairline. I always promised that when my male pattern baldness became too noticeable, I would take the dignified way out and just shave it all off (again). I feel that day may not be too far off. It comes to me when I look around and see a bunch of 20-somethings (and younger) walking around, making googly eyes at each other, and it reminds me again that I'm in my early 30s and have not settled down yet. That's probably when I feel the worst. Let's not go there. And did I mention I quit a secure, well-enough-paying job with great benefits and traded it in for a career change to I don't know what and many thousands of dollars of debt?
A very close second is when some physical activity that used to be easy becomes just a bit more difficult. Sunday was a good case in point. I play basketball a lot. I don't know that I'm very good, but I enjoy it. I make my shots, make a few good passes, and try to play good defense. Sunday I don't know that I did any of those particularly well. This may or may not be partially attributable to injuring my ankle fairly early on. I went up for a shot and came down on someone's foot. I still don't know the extent of the damage, but will try to find out in the morning. I'm thinking it may just be sprained, but the swelling and lingering pain makes me think it would be a good idea to get it checked out.
(Tanget: I guess the best course of action would have been to quit then. But like any good male eager to prove his worth, I kept going, which was probably stupid. Hey, I didn't think it was that bad. It's like that seen in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where King Arthur runs up against that angry knight who keeps fighting despite Arthur chopping off his limbs one by one, and when he has no more limbs, finally declares the fight a draw. "Dude, you all right? Your ankle looks pretty bad." "Nah, I'm fine, let's keep going." "Seriously, dude, you're foot should not be bent that way." "It's just a flesh wound, c'mon, let's keep playing." "Okay, whatever.")
Regardless of the reason, I felt like I got winded before anyone else, all but perhaps one of whom were younger than me. This seems to happen more and more lately. Back in the day, even a couple years ago, I would play in my rec league at work, and we'd all have to play a full forty minutes since we were short-handed. We'd play the whole game, and at the end, I'd look around at everyone with their hands on their knees, sucking wind, and go, "C'mon, you're not tired already, are you?" I don't think I could do that anymore. Nowadays, I'm the one sucking wind, going, "Give me a minute here." It's not like I'm out of shape or anything; it's just that doing what I used to do has gotten that much harder. What used to be easy at 28 is no longer so easy at almost-31. I could hike to the top of a tall hill now and feel more out-of-breath than I would have a couple of years ago. That mile run that used to take 7.5 minutes now takes more like eight. Little things.
This bothers me in a vague way. It tells me that age is starting to creep up on me; it's a portent to the days when perhaps I won't be able to get physical at all, and that's the scary part. Part of me believes my body will eventually betray me, and if it does, I hope it does in one fell swoop, where I can lay there looking up at the sky and think to myself, "Well, at least I didn't fall apart piece by piece." Maybe that's what I'm really afraid of: getting old slowly and realizing that the things I used to do in my youth are impossible now. It could also be that I'm coming back to the pack, regressing towards the mean. Despite being rail-thin, I've always been active and had great endurance. Maybe now that I'm slipping a bit in that regard, I'm just becoming more like everyone else. Who knows.
One thing I do know: I could still take you. All of you. So don't mess with me. 'Kay?
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