Blues

To what extent is it the job that is soul-sucking, as opposed to the attitude one brings to the job? And when is the sensation of deadening properly diagnosed as a form of protective fear (e.g., protection from the fear of not being up to the challenges ahead ... or the fear of infusing a job one does not care about with things one does care about)?

We moved overseas when I was almost 12, and had begun to experience gnawing adolescent self-doubt. So I leaped at the chance to start over in a new place. But these new anxieties and doubts were not (as I thought) connected with my external circumstances; they were not in any way emanating from my close-knit group of elementary school friends. Because these worries were generated from within, they proved to be entirely portable. They followed me across the Atlantic and back again, more powerful than before because I dared not name them or confront them. (After all, if you have some deep failing or inadequacy, or some undefined and imperceptible rottenness in the core, your only hope is to conceal it and hope no one catches on...right?)

There are times when the discrepancy between self-perception and objective reality is so strong that an outsider cannot really believe it. The only answer, the only solution has to be what Tim Keller referred to as "blessed self-forgetfulness". And the question has to be how, or perhaps the question is what must one focus on to put everything else (including one's goodself, as the Trinidadians say) in proper perspective?