Working

I have not been able to decide if I want to keep this post going while I am in Houston. Nothing happens here and I don't do anything so there is little to say really. My schedule is pretty much as follows: Wake up around 8 and get ready for work at 10 then I work till about 2 and go to the gym till 4:30 or 5 at which time I go back to work till around 2am and start all over again. So basically I work out two hours a day and work like 22.

I have read about 10 pages since I got back here, a testament to the wasteland that Texas is...and a brief shot at why I dread being a lawyer...a lifetime of 90 hr work weeks with no time for doing what I am passionate about, philosophy. Even when I get a few minutes to sit down and read I am so exhausted that I either fall asleep or just stare blankly at the pages.

I always used to say that the idea of working for no other reason than to afford yourself the capacity to keep working is a ridiculous circle. That is what I am doing. I am working so that I can afford the expressos and one meal a day that I need to get myself back into work. All of this just solidifies my commitment to not living like this.

If there are a few things that bring joy to your life, and you can no longer do those few things, then you have to take a day or so off to sit down and think about whether or not your life needs changing or if its really worth living. You get one, very short, expanse of time here, and I have breathed a little bit too much of life in my short 25 years to commit myself to the slow withering of it for whatever time I have left.

In the same vein, I have decided that I never want to catch myself saying, "man I wish this day/week/month would just get over" and actually mean it. Cause then what? I wish it would "get over" into what? At this point in our lives all is contingent excepting one thing, ultimately and finally we are throttling toward the second of the two unconditionals in our lives (and they are different only in semantics). I am not quite ready to "get over" the conditional and find myself on the doorstep of necessity.

People can criticize, joke about, and romanticize my lifestyle as much as they want...for me life is a pathos most of the time, terribly aware of the interrelation with its antipode. I like being with my friends; I like meeting new people; I enjoy visiting places I have never seen; I like a good cup of green tea in the very early morning, mid-afternoon, and evening; I enjoy surfing from time to time; and finally I enjoy reading philosophy and writing...

I am a philosopher, not a lawyer, not a lifeguard, not a waiter, etc...Philosophy was a choice at one time...its not a choice anymore. If I do not exercise it then I am miserable, psychologically and physically miserable. Philosophy fills my life up, and I wager it fills me with more life than most, but the flip-side is that life without it, even for the briefest time, is the most absent and empty life one could ever imagine. "The unexamined life is not worth living," said Socrates, but he was only part right...and you can figure out why.