The logical song

Any day where you wake up and there is a supertramp song stuck on repeat in your head is guaranteed to be one with the potential for reflection.

For the curious, or those who don’t know supertramp, it’s the logical song. The wikipedia entry does a pretty good job of providing an analysis of it, and thus saves me dumping the lyrics here or getting into picking apart the words.

However, the interpretation of the words aren’t important. What is is how the song mirrors my own condition right now.

I’ve been feeling lost for a while now, and not having been in a working regime for the best part of six months has seen me enjoy the shift into being my own person, unfettered by the desire to fit in at the workplace. Why am I feeling lost though? It’s curious really, I think it’s because I don’t know what I want anymore. I know who I am, and I have a really strong sense of that now. I just don’t know what it is I want. I used to have a strong sense of focus on personal outcomes, what I wanted to achieve and where I wanted to go. Now though, I’m feeling unsure.

That, is a lie.

I am sure about what I want, I’m just unsure about how to get it, and being afraid to fail at trying to get it. I want to create, I want to write, I want to organise and be involved in things. It’s my creativity I want to express, not in a completely artistic way, more in a practical way, sharing insights and opinions.

It’s a question of finding my voice. What is it I want to say? What is it I want to write about? I know one day I’d like to talk at TED, at the moment though I don’t know about what. I don’t know enough, I don’t have a field I can talk about (yet). It’s all about finding my core and creating my voice.

Although, even writing that feels uncomfortable.

I started meditation recently, it’s going very well and as a practice with Buddhist overtones I find it suits my temperament really quite well. The thing I want most out of it though is to be in the now, to be able to act without dwelling or worrying about what might be or what might happen. The flip side of that is that it can make planning hard as if you’re in the now and moving from moment to moment, planning feels like you’re going back to the worrying. The worry is around me, it moves around from topic to topic as I shine a light on its hiding place. It’s not as debilitating as it used to be, now it’s more like a small pesky rodent that gets underfoot occasionally. Anything I worry about is manufactured, although not without purpose.

One worry I do have is that I’m too geeky for a lot of the full time positions I am applying for. I don’t do x-factor, I don’t do sport, I don’t do pubs and lager swilling sessions. I do D&D, I would do LARP if I didn’t hate camping, I do pubs and wine swilling with other geeks. I wonder sometimes if my geeky nature comes out too much and it’s obvious I stand apart from the culture of the places I’m applying for. That said, I think that’s a good litmus test for anyone who may want to hire me.

“Can you name what weapon does D12 damage in 2nd edition AD&D?”

“erm, what?”

“BZZZT! Wrong answer, it was the bastard sword, guess you don’t want me to work here after all.”

God bless the D12, the most under used of dice.

Where was I? Creating my voice. The metaphor here being unafraid to be who I am, to say what I want to say, be who I want to be irregardless of acceptance. To speak and to say the things that I need to say, perhaps to speak for others like me if that’s appropriate, to find what they want to say if not. Being unafraid to be who I am, warts and all, spikey bits and rough edges, to be gloriously unashamedly human and flawed, HALLELUJAH!

That’s it, to be unfraid to be flawed, to be unafraid to disagree with people, to be unafraid to shout to the world “I’m here, I’m unashamedly a geek, get used to it!”. I have been too scared to be myself for a long time, no more though.

What’s to be gained in pretending to be something you’re not, when all that will happen is that you get bent out of shape and the people you’re trying to impress simply don’t notice or appreciate your efforts?

The answer, is nothing at all.

This above all, to thine own self be true.

Mirrored from Tales of the gentleman misadventurer. Please leave comments there thank you!