Limbo

12.22.2008

The Catholic church has done away with the doctrine of limbo. Unfortunately, it still exists for me. Limbo, that is. I’m not talking about the unbaptized here; I’m talking about my lack of clarity over what I should be doing with my life.

It seems that every step I take is in the wrong direction. That’s not totally true. I am ruling things out things that I don’t want to do, but working one by one is pretty inefficient. At this rate, I will have settled on something by the time I’m eighty.

I went to wilderness school this past semester and learned about primitive skills. I really thought I would be into all of that, but it turns out that I am firmly entrenched in the 21st century. One activity we did was making fire with a bowdrill. It goes like this: you gather four pieces of wood from the forest. One piece needs to be wide and flat, this will be your baseboard. Another piece needs to be long and have some flex in it, this will be your bow. Another piece of wood you will carve down to make a spindle. And the final piece of wood needs to fit into your hand so that you can bear down with it on the spindle. You have to be careful about which types of wood you choose, because, if you don’t, making a fire will be almost impossible. At least, it will feel this way. You then carve out a notch into your baseboard, tie a piece of cordage onto both ends of the bow, flex the bow so that you can wrap the spindle in the cordage, and place one end of the spindle in the baseboard and the other in the piece of wood in your hand. Bear down, turn the bow rapidly until you get a coal.

The problem is that in the time it took me to write the previous paragraph, I could have made a fire with matches. And believe me, after grinding on the bowdrill for over an hour, sweating, getting blisters, having the spindle snap out of place and hit me repeatedly, matches were all I was thinking about.

So it turns out that I will not be a primitive skills guru. Part of this is because I can’t see myself convincing sane adults to make a bowdrill. At least, not enough to make a living. It’s not that everything is about the money, but I want a career now. And I can’t seem to focus my energy right now on things that won’t provide some kind of financial return.

Except writing, that is.

But I find that even writing is hard to do consistently. Ian asked me the other day why, if I’m passionate about writing, is it hard for me to motivate myself on a consistent basis. I told him that great writers throughout time have struggled with this. Margaret Atwood said, “Blank pages inspire me with terror.” Unfortunately, the truth for me is less flattering--I’m actually just lazy. It’s much easier to watch a TV show than to sit at my desk and wrestle with words.

It’s not just that. Sometimes it feels so sad to me to pour out my heart into something other people won’t read. At least, no one but the four people who read my blog (you know who you are). The Japanese philosopher (whose name I cannot remember) writes that when we do something for fame or money, we love results and not actually the activity itself, thus robbing ourselves of the joy of the process. Perhaps I should post that on the wall in my office.

I don’t mean to have self-pity. I do live a blessed life, and I have the luxury of exploring my options. I just hate being between things. I want to run at something with all my heart. I want to break out of limbo.