Candid Thoughts

Most of the stuff I blog about here is fairly preprepared. I typically type something up over a few hours/days in Word/LaTeX, and then post it here with maybe an extra introduction or edit. It's not standard blogging, but I don't care. It's how I get my ideas out. However, I felt the urge (from reading a friends personal blog) to just "blog" for a while, so I shall.

Sometimes I really don't like being interested in so many things. I feel like I'm passionate about (at least); teaching, mathematics, fashion, music, bowling, working out, technology, reading, basketball, and food. On the other hand, I'm not so passionate about any of these things that I dedicate a huge portion of my life to them. This makes a few things difficult:

• Trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.
• Excelling at any one of those things (even though I want to)
• Successfully keeping up with all of them (I've bowled less than 10 times in the last year, when in high school I'd bowl 20 games per week.)

I'm often concerned that being good, even very good, at ten things is not "as good" as being excellent at one. I'm actually pretty convinced that's not true, because it really allows me to live a very balanced, very interesting and fulfilling life. Unfortunately, my perfectionism makes it hard for me to accept (and I won't) anything but excellence in these things. Obviously, I can't even be working toward excellence in more than a few, and this stresses me out. Especially when I decide to sleep in until 10, or when I waste time on Facebook, and the like.

I certainly want to improve myself, but at what point does it cease to be worth it? I don't know if I could push myself to work on math 80 hours a week (let's say I could). Would (only potential) success be worth giving up my other interests, my sleep, time with my family? These are really hard questions to deal with, and there aren't any easy ways to get answers. In a world where current success is often important to future opportunity, it's very easy to get caught in a one-track world (I did), which saps away your enjoyment for something. I maintain that most of us need to have some balance in our lives to be happy, and to do good work. But it never ceases to eat at me.

Let me end this with my high school senior quote, which I think is pretty applicable here:

I cannot be content. For that gift I thank God.