Down to Earth

This has been a tough week, for myself and for our increasingly poor friend, the world economy. But, looking on the bright side, out of the rubble always rises something new. It's the principle of creative destruction, and it makes a whole lot of sense as long as it remains a quiet, well-behaved theory or a housebroken intellectual idea. It starts barking or doing its business on your carpet and that's another matter entirely. Try telling someone who's lost their mortgage, or the lion's share of their pension, that it might be for the best, or that their fortune might still be right around the corner.

By the same token, if you'd tried telling me last Thursday that my shoulder hanging out of its socket during my first-ever sparring match in boxing class was just a door closed and that God would be opening another, it would've taken me a little while to process those admitted words of wisdom.

What's funny about my dislocated shoulder is that it was more a final symptom than the cause of my strange mood. All I know is that I was down in the dumps, and I started thinking it was about all the crazy life decisions I have to make in, like, the next few weeks -- where I want to live, what kind of job I want to have, etc.

What I want to be sure of is that this business school experience leads me somewhere better. Isn't that why we come? To get some kind of a transformative experience? In reality, a means to an end is what many more of us seek, and all too often we're shuffled right into the path of least resistance. I don't want to go right back to New York. I don't want to go right back to the morning subway commute, succumbing to later and later dinners cause work got hectic.

I yearn for the beauty of California, the lifestyle where casual dress is the norm, and the ability to take weekend trips to Lake Tahoe or Santa Cruz or Yosemite or the Napa Valley. But, above all, it's the professional opportunities in San Francisco Bay Area that appeal to me above all others.

Just a little aside: Writing this blog is a funny experience, because it's not like I'm holding a two-way conversation with you, the reader. In fact, chances are good that you're reading this blog all in one shot, so taking a half-hour bus tour of my indecision and confusion. That seems a bit crazy in a place like business school, where the prevailing wisdom is that you should have it all figured out by now. Luckily, I'm not trying to pose as someone with everything figured out. I've got a lot of interests and a couple of relative aptitudes, and I'm still not entirely sure how they'll be put to the best use, but I think I know where -- California!