Echoes of Zanzibar

It’s been thirteen months to the day since I cast my thesis into the fires of Mount Doom, thus ending the epic struggle of grad school with a spectacular conclusion.

It’s amazing how the past year has flown by. It’s alarming to think about it, really. It shouldn’t be June! Who authorized this?!

So I have a year to look back upon and ask myself what good it did. Have I been able to clear my head and straighten my priorities? Of course. Have I figured out what to do with my life? Of course not. Have I done anything with my degree since then? No. Was that year of “peace” what it should have been? I guess so. I mean, life in Kansas City is about what I had expected it to be… except I imagined a few more capers.

I’m not much better off than I was a year ago; I’m still broke, I have no career prospects, and I’m still underappreciated. That’s expected.

The composition program at BG is still a farce. No surprise there. It would be nice to visit BG again soon, to hang out and Grounds for Thought, go to Myles’ Pizza, play Frisbee, and have sweet, sweet, revenge on the faculty of BGSU. Or, at the very least, inform them of their blind spots and give them a devil’s advocate point of view regarding how to improve their narrow-minded management. It would be nice, but not as important to me as it used to be.

That’s not even the purpose of this post. I’ve just been thinking about how things have changed or not changed, how things have turned out as expected or worse, and how time constantly threatens to pass us all by. Having laid my broken dreams to rest, my ambitions have become shapeless, faceless. I know what I want out of life, but I don’t know how to do anything about it.

I was holed up in Alaska, drinking too much.

I’m not going to detail the list of ingredients to a fulfilling life, but one example is that I need to get out of this ascetic phase and back into a give-and-take environment. Peers are good. I also used to be in multiple positions of leadership. I might as well reprise the roles and do something with them.

Has the post-graduate life been what I thought it would be? Has the freedom been as beautiful and idyllic as I dreamed when I was in the thick of the thesis? No. But then again, I didn’t have many expectations.

All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.

I feel like Frodo Baggins, working on his book, having succeeded in his quest, but forever changed by the experience, the burden, and the near-corruption from the One Ring. And with a wound from the Nazgul that never fully healed. Not dwelling in the past, but scarred by it.

We can tell other people about… having faith. What we had faith in. What we found important enough to fight for. It's not whether you were right or wrong, but how much faith you were willing to have, that decides the future… Choose your own legacy. It's for you to decide.

Freedom to Decide. All I really want is a way to do something respectable with music, to have opportunities for further advancement, and to continually satisfy my never-ending creative impulses. And a bandana that provides infinite ammo.