What You Want

I just started writing a long, leisurely piece here.  I was going to take my time.  I thought it was Saturday, and I've been thinking about what I would do since I got up.  Suddenly, it struck me--I heard the factory whistle!  I've never done that before, never not known what day it was.  That scares me.  I was heading out the door to do Saturday things instead of going to work.

I had a distant uncle who did things like that.  He had to be institutionalized.  The family referred to his condition as "hardening of the arteries."  Not enough blood got to his brain, they said.  This was in the way back when doctors prescribed nitroglycerin tablets for heart attack victims.  Nothing else was given except advice.

I'm going to write my confusion off to a recent life change of which I was going to write.  But that can wait.  Almost everything can except those things required by others.  For a very long time, I have subscribed to the idea that most people are unhappy because they don't know what they want.  We must do two things in life--what others require us to do and what we want to do.  Some of us are good at doing what is required.  Others (me) are not.  Now I am faced with doing more of what I want to do.  It will take a few moments to figure that out.  I've thought in grander terms.  Now it is time to get granular.

The consequences of doing what you want to do can be as bad as not doing what is required.  That's a funny conundrum.