Two Years of Doing What?

The first post was published on April 27 2017 and in reviewing it I find myself embolden by a message I have forgotten. At the time I was working two jobs, as a part-time store clerk and a prep chef and kitchen helper a few days a week. Scrapping by with just enough to pay my rent, bills and student loans survival was a big topic on my mind. And if was then it surely has become greater now. The funny thing is now I am at a better paying job, a job where I can work forty hours a week at a wage that allows me to gain the same income as I was earning working the two prior jobs. I have now moved into carpentry and have more or less committed to this trade. Odd is it not? That I would go from studying philosophy in college to working these jobs using the labor and skill of my hands and not my mind. There I times where I do wonder if I have taken the wrong step in life and I look behind me to find where said misstep occurred. But when I look behind me, I see not one but many and many more which are questionable. In my more optimistic moods I see no mistakes, simply turns on the path of life and a young person doing their level best to cope with changing circumstances. But I would be lying if I would to believe that optimism blindly. The truth is I have made mistakes, some of which have costed me great opportunities. But at the same time those forks and bends in the road have present many other opportunities which I would have never seen otherwise.

Let me go back two years, when I was just getting back from being away at university. At the time I had left school I was not the person who I thought I was or wanted to be. I had not accomplished what I thought I should of academically and in fact left school without completing my bachelor's degree. This was a far cry from where I thought I would be and in many ways I felt myself returning home in defeat. Defeated by own shortsightedness, lack of impulse control, and responsibility. I recall the mentality I had about going to class; rather than seeing lectures as the wonderful opportunity they were I felt that it was a meeting I was at liberty to attend or miss as I wanted, why—because I had paid for it. In the many night shifts I spent washing dishes in a hot kitchen I would look back at those times where I was too lazy to get out of bed and think to myself, “well this was a lesson that I had to learn the hard way”. What I had to learn was to get out of bed and do the work, the hard work that I may not want to do but needed to get done. I had the opportunity for a long time to easy work, to study for exams, to show up for class, to plan club meetings. I look back at the kid who felt so stressed out doing that and laugh at the foolishness. But there is a time to be a dumb kid and while that was a mistake in a sense it is a forgivable one.

In the fall of 2017, I was frustrated young man unhappy with sitting behind a counter and disgruntled with washing dishes and chopping vegetables. I wanted change but didn’t know how to make my way back to a university. Not only was the space limited for classes and housing I myself had grown disillusioned with the educational system. In first twenty-three years of my life I had not spent more than a few months outside of a school. At that time I was coming into the first year of not being a student at any institution but I never stopped studying. It was a year of intellectual freedom reading whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, writing on what I wanted, however I wanted. True I could appreciate the feedback and guidance of an expert in the subject. But this freedom was a bliss, this was a freedom of thinking for myself which felt so much better than studying to for an argument for a grade. This brings me back to the beginning of this blog, to the intention I had when I first started the page. In a way it was an effort to hold onto a part of myself I felt I had lost. No longer having any assignments to write for I gave myself something to write about. I wanted to follow the structures and patterns that I had been trained to do. So at the inception I saw myself continuing my study of philosophy, reading materials, taking copious notes, and forming arguments; all at my own intellectual freedom. What changed? I changed, I changed with the realities of being a working man.

To say that it is not easy working forty hours a week and to do a full-time students work is totally missing the point. Both are full commitments and your mind can only handle so much, inevitably you will not be giving your best efforts either at work or at school. And if you are working a job that is entry level or that you do not care about then that is fine to give all your steam to your studies. You just have to overcome exhaustion. What then is my excuse for not finishing any of the essays I planned while being out of school. Well I could give a whole list of which I would give the title of unexpected occurrences. Yes, the good old twists and turns on the unfamiliar road of life. Going back to the fall of 2017 I, being young and unhappy, was lamenting my time spent in school and lack of opportunity I was finding in the business world. It was at this time that an unexpected opportunity presented itself in the form of labor work on a construction crew. Since I had recently became in need of a new job I jumped into the opportunity. If I had thought I had learned to work hard before this I was about to realize that all that was just warm up. Working in construction has taught me more than I could have ever expected. I have learned more about responsibility, diligence, quality, endurance, and life philosophy on the work site than I did at university. I found in this job something that gave me structure and freedom, security and pain. In doing all this work over the past two years it took me a long time before I realized that I was living out Plato’s ideal education. In the Republic Plato writes that the philosophers kings who are to lead the society should be sent to a few years of hard work after completing their studies. This was so that the leaders could understand the people better. I am no leader nor to I believe that I would ever become one. But I see the value of this kind of education. But none of this answers my original purpose for writing this piece. In fact, nowhere I have clearly stated what the point of this was at all.

This free flowing piece of writing has been motivated my one thought, one question: what is the purpose of this blog? Why did I start it again? What has become of it? In the first post I wrote that this was an experiment. At the time this meant that I was going to be writing about philosophy in way that was outside of the academic realm and that is still my intention. The problem is finding the time and energy to do it. The things that no one can really plan for, health issues, money troubles, family in need, these are all things which can become lessons if you want to make them so. Or they can become the greatest burden and obstacle in you path. I can refer constantly to that aforementioned list of unexpected occurrences and bemoan the fact that they ever happened. That doesn’t change the fact that they did, nor does it change the actions which I took to mediate the situations. In all the twists and turns of the path there is really only one thing to do, keep stepping forward. And things will not always be great, plans can be excellent but the straight line drawn on the map may turn out to be a long wide curve. In the past two years I have continued my education, through reading but more valuable through life experience. The great intellectual endeavor that is Lost in Aporia goes on. But the guise it which it presents itself has changed. There are more sections on here now than I ever intended. Never once did I think to post poetry until the day that I did. When did I decide that I was going to write stories, I couldn’t tell you. Will it ever get do? Sure it will on piece at a time, one step at a

time. Because that is really all anyone can hope to do.