Though I’m doing other things with my life, I still sometimes have the sensation that my academic career plows onwards, like a ghost ship raided and abandoned by pirates. It’s a disembodied feeling, sort of like there’s a whole part of my body still on that boat, spinning the wheel and hoisting a sail, that I have not been able to retrieve. Or maybe now that the winds that youthful enthusiasm and passion have died down it is just floating around, waiting for more wind. When one commits oneself to some meaning very fervently while young, swearing off all other distractions and engraving a sense of meaning in the brain, that can be hard to undo. Regardless of whether one is actually even good at it or not.

Sometimes while building out my kayak, punching out the folds that allow it to float, I like to imagine that it’s possible to punch out parts of one’s personality that have become dented or warped through experience and make it more seaworthy.

At this age, it’s a strange combination of “not having patience for this, that, or my own bullshit anymore” and trying to salvage what can be worthwhile. At any rate, there’s no harm in trying to continue to learn new things, fill out my understandings, and work on my delivery.