A parking space right in
front of my accountant's office! What luck! There's never
any place to park around here. I step out of the car and
sink ankle deep in slush. Something drips from the awning
of the building and soaks one side of my jacket. I
vaguely remember a weather forecast on the radio, which
came on about an hour earlier than I'd set it for, saying
something about the sleet changing to snow and
accumulating up to 5 inches in the Merrimack Valley.
Whenever they specifically mention the Merrimack Valley
on the weather report you know the news is bad. If it's
going to be worse somewhere, that somewhere is always the
Merrimack Valley. The thought lingers in my mind as I
review my taxes in the accountant's bright yellow office.
This is the only accounting office I've ever seen with
yellow chairs and tables and it looks like a sleek 1950's
modernist scene from a design magazine. I think I
promised the accountant I'll set up a LAN in her house.
Oops. First, I'd better network my own house. I reach
into my pocket and pay her with a wet check. The sleet
becomes vaguely snowlike. I go back home to make curried
pumpkin soup (with celeriac and edamame).
The day slips through my
unproductive fingers so fast I don't really have time to
notice what a drain on society I have become. Or
something like that. It's night before I remember it was
day. Not only is today passing me by, yesterday passed me
by, and the day before that and the day before that and
my whole ridiculous middle-aged life is passing me by,
accelerating out from under me like a motorcycle with the
throttle stuck.
I recently read an article in O,
The Oprah Magazine entitled Life Don't Mean a
Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing by Valerie Monroe.
It described quite accurately the disequilibrium I'm
feeling. Monroe quotes a friend of hers as saying "I'm in
my terrible 52s". That's exactly what I said to Ned when
we were having coffee in lieu of birding on Wednesday
(bad visibility for birding). I told him I feel a lot
like I did when I was in my 20's except it's a different
war, I'm not trying to decide whether to marry the
Vietnamese boyfriend so he can get a green card, and I
don't drink anymore. Other than all that it's the same
feeling out of whack, in turmoil, vulnerable, and off
balance except with a heightened sense of urgency. I feel
like everything has to be solved right now or I'm going
to implode. And the resolution has to be exactly
perfectly right.
The article goes on to talk about
how adults move in and out of equilibrium in 5 to 7 year
cycles, kind of like children going through their
developmental stages. Aha! Of course! I read
Passages back then in the olden times:
"predictable crises of adult life", all that Eriksonian
stuff. I guess I didn't realize I could have multiple
mid-life crises. I thought quitting my soulless job and
taking the next 6 years off solved my mid-life crisis. I
thought going back to work in a high-tech startup, this
time with nothing to prove because I've already had my
career, and doing a creditable job at it resolved
something. So a year and a half later, I'm all adrift and
off balance, at loose ends once again wrestling with
feeling the need to contribute to society and at the same
time feeling there's nothing more I can accomplish. And
life is passing me by.
Last week I said something on the
phone to Zsolt about how I was trying to figure out what
to do with the rest of my life. He laughed and asked how
much longer I was planning to live. Then yesterday when I
was over at the "Framingham lab" working, he was on me
about taking care of my health because he's afraid I
might die before the project is done. Wait a minute,
wasn't he the one he was worried about last year?
What up with that? And I ain't planning to die, I'm just
adrift.
I'm not even really purposeless.
István wants me to come to Budakeszi in June/July
to work on the English version of the color
conifer book. Zsolt wants
me to coordinate an exhibition of drawings from the atlas
at Arnold Arboretum this fall. He's acting like I'm
already doing it. Also, I've applied for the newly
created executive director position at the cat shelter,
not that I think I'll get it with so many applicants who
are actually qualified for it. And how the heck I
would edit the book in Budakeszi while administering cats
in Salisbury I have no freakin' idea. I told Zsolt he'd
have to pay me $1 more than the cat shelter to get me to
work for him. Hmm, this would only work if I actually got
the cat shelter job 'cause $1 more than $0 is only $1 and
I might was well work for him for free as for a dollar.
When does the part where doing what you love results in
money kick in?
At least I'm getting a refund this
year.
