Sneaking Suspicion and Platitudes

I'm a little worried about something. Well, somethings. But here's one of them:

What if I've used up all my responsibility? My motivation to get shit done is a big fat el zilcho. I just want to veg out, hide, waste time, and generally be useless.

I'm even having trouble doing the day to day, making myself go to work, go to the store, etc.

What if all I had was about a decade of ass-busting, and I used it all up? I mean, I've never been an overachiever, but looking back I have kept myself pretty busy this last ten years or so. School, work, working out (in MULTIPLE and seemingly ENDLESS forms), social organizing, blah blah whatevercakes.

I mean, I left my last situation feeling burnt out. I was hoping a massive change of scenery and culture would knock my ass back into step. But I was also worried that my burn out was more extensive, and wouldn't be so easily rebounded from. (I couldn't figure out how to end that sentence without sounding like a pretentious ass, so the preposition will dangle.)

But what if it's worse than burn out. What if the power bar indicator on my Responsibility Meter is permanently depleted? Out of Rupies? No Hearts left? Yes, I loved Scott Pilgrim, why do you ask?

This notion hit me as I was leaving work on Tuesday, and when I got in my car the song on the player was "We Never Change," by Coldplay. Apropos.

********

Today at a work mtg with one of my bosses and a co-worker, we touched on the Universal Truism About Dating.

We all pretty much agreed it boiled down to this: you never find someone until you stop looking, and as soon as you aren't looking/start dating someone, everybody and their brother starts hitting on you.

I can attest to this. If I start seeing someone, folks come out of the woodwork to make a play. Total strangers hit on me (not in my normal everyday existence). There's probably a lot of factors involved in this, including subtle cues of improved esteem and increased looseness with behavior (you don't have to be guarded because you are "spoken for"--kind of like assuming that it's safer to hang out with a married person than a single one, since the married person is off the table. Strangely, it's the married people who have the hardest time remembering this, while naive singletons think it's a given. Spoken as a former naive singleton).

I've observed the first part to be true as well--people who are desperate for relationships never get them. I'll cop to the fact here that in this case I'm kinda like that skinny bitch who says she never diets--I'm never looking, really, so I guess I'm in the perennial state of non-seeking, and whatever vibe that puts out.

So we're shooting the shit about this, and I realize: this only works in dating. How come other things in life don't come along when you aren't looking for them? I mean, like, I wasn't looking for a million dollars this weekend. So how come a million dollars didn't drop in my lap? What's the deal?

My co-worker noted it was probably because you never really divested yourself of those other desires. And she's probably right. But still. Come on. There have been times I wasn't trying to become independently wealthy, achieve enlightenment, find inner peace, or whatever. And it STILL didn't happen for me while I wasn't looking.

I'm calling shenanigans on this one. SCREW YOU, UNIVERSE!! I SHAKE MY IMPOTENT FIST AT YOU!

But maybe I'll still get away, just turn my back on the crowd. I really have been thinking a lot more about living conditions on the tops of remote mountains. Can you be too old to join the Peace Corps? Do you have to be Tibetan to join a monastery?