To be a Hermit...

So, I googled an old flame today. That was...an interesting mistake?

(By the way, Google, you own blogspot, yet your dictionary doesn't register google, either as a noun or a verb? uh??)

Turns out she's a pediatrician. She's a got a kid now, or two; I didn't delve too deep. Her husband is going to be a lawyer. I'm certain she'll be a great pediatrician. They'll do great things.

It made me think about the direction of my life. I feel a little sheepish, a tad embarrassed. I'm living in a basement room, working a entry-level job, trying to dodge the credit agents until I can move up enough to pay them. I've written a few songs that nobody's heard. I'm not on the fast track to doing "great things". I haven't studied anything with any intent, haven't produced anything of caliber, and aside for helping a few folks now and again, haven't been particularly useful. I've learned a lot, a little about everything. By no means a jack of all trades, though. It's been an odds and ends life for me.

The flip-side is that I never had a goal of accomplishing anything. I've never been ambitious. I used to daydream about being a hermit in the woods when I was growing up. Ha, maybe I've accomplished that; I only see a few friends every now and again, by habit, if not choice. In many ways, I think my goal has been to Understand. I suppose I'm slowly accomplishing that, but not in the standard way. I never cared for studies. I consider them a necessary evil. Books and academia will jade you and warp you. Any path, in fact, will do that. I'm not sure I want to be warped by academia, studies, or books.

Anyway, it's embarrassing to have your formers and your peers accomplishing where you are not. I'd like to take some little victory away by making a "this vs. that" case, but frankly, I don't think I can. I've not particularly had any goals, and I've not particularly had any accomplishments. I think I could make the case that in some way I've dumbed down the bar so that I could stand to live with myself.

But I think I've also come to the point where I can see that the value of a goal is not in its accomplishment. It's somewhere else, whether that's the journey or a future enabled by that goal or that accomplishments allow you to be useful to people and to the world. They keep you moving. Maybe the importance of goals is in simply helping yourself to mirror a dynamic world. It *is* a dynamic world, and rather than being static, we, too, should be dynamic.

I'm reassessing...