Salvaging the Wreck

Today was a bit of a struggle for me. I was irritable, moody, and in pain for part of the day at work, and it was a little stressful in the morning. Regardless, I made it through and now I am back at home. The more and more I stay at my job, the more and more I realize that I'm not just satisfied with a bachelor's degree. I need to go back to school. I really do. And part of me has this funny feeling that once I go back, I will stay in academia for a long, long time. I yearn to be challenged again in a way that pushes my brain to its limits. I yearn to be victorious when I work my ass off. I miss the feeling of just "getting it," when "getting it" means grasping a multitude of concepts and applying them to achieve an even higher understanding of something. It's almost like a religion, this education is. For me, academia is very spiritual in that you struggle through something very difficult, such as a text or a concept, and once you are able to grasp it, you reach this nadir where you suddenly see things as they are. I recall as an English major, grasping concepts from obscure deceased philosophers as I pored over the texts and realizing that this was truly a spiritual and knowledge-based awakening in the truest sense. I miss that.

This picture is of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. I thought it was a fitting picture for this post. This is a marvelous place to go if you want to educate yourself (or re-educate yourself) about the solar system, how seasons work, how tides ebb and flow. Although the details are very scientific, I found it to be very poetic in a way. The galaxy as well as the universe is too large for the human mind to fathom. Time is calculated in light-years. We went on a beautiful Sunday morning and I found it to be very peaceful up on top of the hills.