time to get a move on

It has to be at least a year since I decided to take a hiatus from summarising my thoughts on AnCon '09, and I have to admit that it's probably a bit more than a hiatus by this stage. Think I really dropped that ball.

I find it slightly interesting, though, that I left off after writing about "getting a move on", and now I'm back to thinking about the same issues. I know it's time to "get a move on" and do something, but what? I'm not sure.

I've talked with a senior EU staffworker about spending a couple of years in training with the EU, and the main thing we worked out was that I had to think about whether I was ready for it. I'm not sure that I am. I've been in the EU and around Sydney Uni for about seven years now, and that's a long time by anyone's standard. I'm getting fairly jaded, and that's not the kind of thing you want to pass on to passionate first years. So maybe that wouldn't be the best move just yet.

So the other two options are work and post-grad study. I gotta say, I'm really liking the thought of post-grad study. Studying music honours is pretty sweet, and I'm really loving the writing experience. Post-grad study feels like an excuse to write more, and particularly to write more about music. They say that a good music critic can write about music in a way that makes you hear it in your head, and I'm not there yet, but I'd sure as heck like to be. If I stayed at Sydney I could have a great supervisor, and there may be other options nearby. But there are a few down sides to this path. To survive would either mean more time on Centrelink, getting a scholarship, or working part-time. Unattractive, unlikely, and unhinged respectively. Also, having a post-grad degree doesn't necessarily make you more employable. That said, God uses everything.

Or I could just get a job. I've definitely missed graduate intakes for next year, and I won't have the headspace to look for work until after mid-October when my thesis is due. I don't know, it's still an option, and could be a good one. I could start to live in the *cough* real world *cough* ...

And as if that isn't a stupid term anyway. What makes someone socially benign isn't what they do with their life but how much they give a damn about what's around them. You don't graduate to a life in the real world, you were born there. No, you graduate to a life where either:
a. you can afford to distract yourself from the real world, or
b. you know the real world (or at least a part of it) better.
I'll choose b any day. Whatever it is that ends up filling my time, I want to keep my head out of the clouds. I'll never forget how a friend's dad (a tradie) once criticised academics for being practically useless. I figure there's no point trying to improve humanity if humanity thinks you're not worth listening to. And that goes for anything I could end up doing: EU staffworking, post-grad study or full-time work. The way people recognise that you're worth their time is how much you give a damn about them, about what they do and about how they think. And of course, that means you have to think about them, what they do and what they think about. It doesn't come to you automatically when you can finally afford a bigger TV.
/rant

*ahem*

So I think... on reflection... all I really know that I want to do is to keep knowing how to fix stuff.