Existential ponderings. An ongoing series.

Question: What the hell?

Specifically: What the hell am I doing with my life? One minute, I'm in my twenties going to graduate school to pursue my love for music. The next, I'm in my mid-thirties working towards a Ph.D. that has a highly debatable degree of consequence to this universe. 

I mean, at least when I was a performer I could offer the justification that I was contributing to society by sharing the gift of music. Now? Working on a dissertation whose topic is probably only marginally interesting to myself, my advisor, and possibly four other people on the planet? And (TRUTH BOMB) what if I sometimes don't always fully totally completely care about my dissertation topic? I mean, it's interesting and I have a brain crush on it. And today I may be apathetic whereas tomorrow I will be obsessed again. But will it cure cancer or end homelessness? And assuming we have a hairless puppy or two someday before my uterus completely turns into Tatooine Jakku, will my work even matter to their world? How much of my life do I want to spend gazing into the dark lifeless abyss that is my navel? Am I the World's Worst Doctoral Student?

DO NOT ANSWER THAT QUESTION.

The doctorate was a goal that I set for myself over a decade ago, and it's a difficult thing to not see a personal goal like this through. Especially when it has been a longer road than I first anticipated, as we traversed through different moves, miscellaneous job changes, and other such life turns that delayed the process. So I see it through. I go along and I make baby steps towards the finish line and I tell myself that it will all be worth it in the end. But, in the meantime, I'm not teaching, I'm not making music, I'm not earning a salary, and I'm working menial office jobs that pay a menial hourly wage because there are still bills to pay and life still costs money and apparently nobody wants to hire an intelligent and skilled clarinet-playing musicologist-in-training who has experiencing working ALL THE JOBS and can also make an awesome quiche, and this is nobody's fault but my own, really, so I should stop whining. 

But it's my emo party and I'll whine if I want to.

This all would be so much easier to stomach if I were younger and the prospect of devoting years of your life to a higher (education) calling still seems noble and righteous and any foreseeable ramifications are but a blip on the horizon. Well, now I'm tottering over the precipice of middle age (and not even the fun Monty Python Knights Who Say Ni kind of Middle Age) and it's not really so carefree anymore. 

I suppose at the end of the day this is just a struggle about feeling purposeful and significant.

What am I doing in this world? What am I doing for the world? (Besides making awesome quiches.)

I wonder what the next year will bring. Hopefully a checkered flag and the start of a new chapter. So to speak.