First Panic in the Year of the Breakdown

Well, I made it a full three weeks before my first career-related panic attack of the year. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, careerwise, I'm completely lost — staggering around the alleys of the economy like a vocational vagabond, spread too thinly, with too many interests and no reason to pursue any one with particular vigor, because there's little variation in lack of apparent opportunity, yet clinging to each like a worn bit of cloth in the dead of winter. More and more regularly, I've found myself lurking by the entrance of St. Jude's Home for the Uselessly Talented.

I'm going back to the drawing board with the Flash site. I just wasn't translating the vision with which I began into a final design, and it may be the case that I have to do some self-training before I'm able to do so. Perhaps a whole new concept is in order. We'll see. Meanwhile, my attempts to restart the piano playing are slipping (I've always found it more difficult to motivate myself to practice without a real piano, for some reason), and a delayed Web design means a delay in a return to writing my next book.

Well, such is life, particularly when full-time employment doing anything remotely similar to one's interests and/or well paying becomes like fruit to Tantalus, when one's family still lives in a shack, and when one has another child on the way. It is best, of course, to concentrate on that which is going well, but somebody must be aware of the looming dangers, and being that somebody in my house, I'm allowed to vent, no?

I began the year with three weeks of irrational optimism. With effort on my part, it will return, but there's a very real possibility that this could be the Year of the Second Breakdown. (Then again, the Year of the First Breakdown brought the first steps toward conversion.)

Stay tuned.