Resolution

I'M BACK!

Well, hopefully, I will be. I sort of made a resolution to write something--anything at all-- everyday. But look-- it's the last day of January and these are the first words I am writing for the year!

I didn't make the resolution for the benefit of my faithful readers... if I do have any. The resolution is more for myself, in the manner that all resolutions are. I resolved to write so that my creative and logical capabilities do not go to waste-- so that my grammar does not wither away, so that my wit and humour (or whatever I have of it) do not retreat and rust in some inaccessible corner of my mind. No, I cannot stand for that. I cannot stand for wasting four years of college and a lifetime of education. I will not stand for it. I am determined that these will not lose to the humdrum of my days. Bring on the history and the politics. Bring on the art and literature. I am a willing student of all life has to offer.

See! That's what I am talking about! I've gotten carried away! I've brought myself to the conclusion in only one paragraph! Oh, I wanted to talk about the routine of my job; how each day is the same as the last, and how I often must just grit my teeth and rely on the joy that is inside me through Jesus. I wanted to talk about the irony of liking my job only when I'm not actually doing it. As relief officer, my primary function is to provide relief when another officer goes on leave. But I actually prefer not to provide relief! I like it better when I stay in my home branch, which is a busy one. At least when I am busy, I don't have time to think about how crappy things are. But nooo-- I get thrown into the hinterlands of commerce. I have to deal with people who either don't know how to deal with people or don't want to deal with them at all. And I am talking about those who only know how to listen to themselves, who engage in dialogue when it is really monologue, that is to say, the other person in the conversation exists only to affirm, to say the things they want to hear. When you try to explain how things work, the explanation is shunned, so that in the end, all of it really becomes useless. Things can get useless when I'm busy like that; but they get more useless when I'm not busy at all, and now I speak of the commercial hinterlands, where you can count the number of things you accomplish in a day. And often, the things you accomplish barely count for accomplishments because they are they same, proceduralised things of operations-related work.

Wasted. I really don't like to use that term, but Carrie Underwood is singing that word in my head:

"I don't wanna' spend my life jaded

Waiting to wake up one day and find

That I've let all these years go by

Wasted"

Well, technically, it hasn't been years. But why wait for it to degenerate as so? No. I must not fall into a stupor. I must keep my eyes on higher things. Yes, be faithful to the circumstances that were given to me (another Carrie song, "You get the life you're given"). But faithful in this case does not have to equate to acceptance. I'll do my job, and I'll do it well; but doing will not take away dreaming and wanting. I have dreams, not plans. I romanticise it because I've come to learn that things will not always turn out the way I plan. I had plans about how my career would go after college, but nothing has proceeded in that way. So, now, I have dreams, instead of plans... at least dreams, people will not take away. Plans are the stuff of the exterior, which is prey to circumstances, the way people affect each other through relationships of hierarchy or motives. But dreams, they are what is inside. And you can keep it with you, no matter what path you take, until it becomes real, because you've stayed real to it.