I don’t like the term quarter-life crisis. I think it’s too cute for the turmoil I’m going through. I’m experiencing pressure from too many different sources. I’ve been flirting with the idea of quitting my job. Forty hours a week in addition to full-time student commitments is an obstacle. It is during nights too. I am always run so ragged. I am meeting the most minimal of obligations right now. I don’t know if I will get my honors degree. My parents would still be proud if it was just a general BSc. but I would feel ashamed. So today, in my zombie like state I was thinking about which movie characters best represented certain people in my life. For Merle I settled on a cross between Butch’s girlfriend in Pulp Fiction (who ponders her pot belly) and Glen Close’s Fatal Attraction character.

For myself I had a hard time. It is difficult to pin down my personality. I consider myself an introvert, however if you posed this question to a few people who knew me they would laugh and disagree. Growing up, I didn’t have anything that really defined me but I floated between many worlds. I played hockey and soccer in organized leagues; football, golf and skiing for fun. I camped, rode my dirt bike and did lots of fishing. At the same I played tons of Role playing video games, was a precocious and frequent reader, did well scholastically and hung out with some pretty “nerdy” kids. In high school it was more of the same, seemingly half of the time I would sit with the dorkiest clique and talk about Universities, software programs, school marks, scholarships, anime, comic books, science fiction, rpg’s etc. Then the other half of the time I would sit at the other table and it was always girls, sports, music and snowmobiles. I was always the quiet guy at either table, contributing now and then, just happy to be around and included. I didn’t hate high school, I don’t look back with any nostalgia though either. I skipped a ton of class. I’m still proud that I was able to do that and make high marks.

In University it was more of the same I suppose. I played less sports, had a social awakening and marks that oscillated year to year from excellent to really barely hanging on. My transcript is hilarious. I have years with failures and prevailing mediocrity back to back with years filled with eighties and nineties. Coming off two of my excellent Dean’s list years, I returned home to work in a paper mill on a rewinding machine with guys who didn’t have their grade eight education. I received a different kind of education there. One of the guys was so perverted, weird and sexually… aberrant. Still I worked hard and got along great with everyone there and it was a lot of fun.

Even now at my job as a concierge, I feel like an odd gateway between two classes of society. The residents see an up and coming young man, studying exciting topics and seemingly full of optimism and drive. I often have long conversations with professors and big cheese investment guys. I sometimes chat with an MPP and the publisher of the National Post too. At night, I also talk with the guys who deliver the papers, the cab drivers and tradesmen and delivery people. They see just another schmoe working the nightshift for peanuts. I feel at home in both worlds. Duality seems to be the ongoing theme of my life.

My marks were so hideously bad in my first year of University I only had one viable choice for major, Biology. So I took it. In what was supposed to be my final year of undergraduate, I realized, “I don’t like this. I want to do something else.” So, I evaluated my options and asked myself what I would prefer and I thought maybe programming was it. Something that should be a big future industry with much opportunity. And now here I am again, three years later repeating to myself, “I don’t like this. I want to do something else.” The point being that I don’t know what the hell I want to do with my life. What I would really enjoy. What I would have passion for. Seven years of undergraduate allowed me to sample widely from many disciplines. Philosophy, psychology (child and abnormal were fun), history, english and of course all the sciences that made up my major focus. So I am not a science student that is ignorant of the arts and social theory. I don’t devalue these disciplines, a tendency I occasionally notice in my peers. Objectively, I would have to say I enjoyed history the most. Too bad I didn’t discover that until my fifth year.
I guess here is where I should tie it up with a profound statement of how there is no place for a non-specialist. How I need to find a specific talent and latch onto it instead of the drifting search I am perpetually afloat in.

Oh yeah.. I settled on John Cusak in High Fidelity as the closest match to me. I identify with him, maybe that’s why it’s one of my favorite movies. I know I didn’t justify this, I didn’t even talk about my character, mostly just social roles. Oh well. Right now, I feel like watching Drugstore Cowboy. Actually I feel like living Drugstore Cowboy.