Success and Identity

I'm both happy and embarrassed by the fact that my writing these days needs to be personal. I have no energy, or patience, or time, or something, for abstract writing.

I can't write like I was writing a year or so ago. I can't write like I was writing six months ago.

This is good. I need to write the way I need to write. I need to write the way that the uniqueness of the moment demands. And these moments are awfully unique. Very different from other moments I've lived.

The problem I'm having these days is that I'm both conventionally successful and personally dissatisfied. On paper everything has gone well. Life is a great success.

I was an excellent student. I excelled there. I was a good student of military history. I excel at my jobs now. I love coffee, I make it well, and I enjoy making it.

But I no longer feel like a student of military history and I don't feel like a barista.

I feel like something vaguer and more amorphous than that. Rawer than that.

I've got all this wild emotional energy and I have no idea where to direct it.

The things that used to focus me no longer do.

Maybe there is still hope for me studying military history. I'm not sure anymore.

Maybe there is still a possibility that I'll want to be a professional barista. But I doubt it.

Maybe I can find another way to focus my writing.

I sure am enjoying poetry these days.

I want to try and write some fiction.

I don't know what to do.

But it is a good step that I recognize the identity crisis I'm going through.