On Balance

I talked to Sam this morning--our intrepid friends at Second Americano have moved off to Wales to try their fortunes in the British higher education system. They've been there a week so far and it sounds as if it's working out pretty well for them. First off, Sam's teaching a number of hours, this year, that's so, so incredibly low the manufacturer won't allow him to print it. I'm not complaining...no, no, sorry, my mistake, I am complaining. L. and I have been working without a break this weekend, at the same time worrying about whether we have a chance of buying this house we found, wondering, if we manage to even get this house we found (there's no guarantee, given the housing market in Seattle, Washington, that somebody won't bid the price up outrageously) what kind of income we'll be chained into earning, at the same time wondering what in the hell we are doing.

Chaitania, who runs the psychology program at my acupuncture school called last week wondering, well, where the heck I have been. I've missed two of the past four lab days, and haven't otherwise been around much. Between work and looking for a house, I've been spending the last two months doing a lot of things I don't really want to do. Two months ago I also got married, so really what I want to be doing all the time is hanging out with my wife. So acupuncture school is the thing I've let slide.

I'm a smart guy, I'll catch up. So this weekend will come and go and I'll write some papers and log back into work and figure out the coding problem that has been plaguing me all week. I'll get back on top of it and everything will be fine. That's not what troubles me.

One learns in life, or in my case in acupuncture school, that the entities upon which one focuses ones problems are just that and no more. They aren't the source of ones suffering, they are but its avatars. Another way of saying this is, "it will always be something." One might tell onesself that ones problems will vanish once one buys a house/finishes school/gets past the product launch at work/etc., but those things aren't really the source of ones troubled mind. The way you can tell that this is true is that new problems of similar nature pop up soon after you've defeated the avatar of your previous problem.

We aren't by any means miserable people. We are pretty damn comfortable and happy. As L. says, we have what we need and the rest is gravy. Anyway, today it's, "We can't buy a house and I can't keep up with everything, so I'm letting my schoolwork slide." I don't know what it will be when I've solved those problems. Or what I'll find when I stop attaching my stress in life to things that aren't really its cause.