Enamored with the Smallest Bit of Urbanity

I love the city. I wish I lived in a city. Someday, I will live in a big city. Not in the suburbs, downtown in the city. This was confirmed for me once again today when I experienced just a tiny bit of what makes me love urban life.

My family went to the pool this morning, and since I'd gone the day before, and my sister was bringing a friend, I decided to sit this one out. This, of course, left me home to work on some projects.

Before getting down to work, I decided I needed some breakfast. I decided to walk to the nearby Red Pump Cafe, a local eatery with about fifteen seats, a bad website, but some delicious food. Let me go back to an easily overlooked detail there.

I walked to the cafe for breakfast. 1 point.

I've always found walking either alone or with others to be a great experience, a slower way to travel, sure, but you really get to see where you're going, and get some time for uninterrupted thought or discussion. I look forward to being able to walk or bike most places in the city.

The breakfast was good, as expected, but again, the real treat is the experience. I think that I'm particularly fond of (for whatever reason) being in the presence of social interaction while I myself am in isolation. I really enjoy the energy of a full cafe, or a bustling Starbucks when I work. I used to think I worked better when I was around other people working. This meant a lot of trips to the library. I've since realized that this was only half the story; I also need other people to be doing things; talking, working, making noise, moving around. I'll be spending a lot more time in coffee-shops (though I hate coffee), cafes and other public places at school next year (here I come Ninth Street).

I think much of my love for the urban environment comes from this simultaneous isolation and socialization. I also like the architecture. (My future home will have far more metal, glass, and concrete than wood or brick). Either way, it is always a pleasure to experience bits and pieces of it here and there as I did today.

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.