Discernment

At work tonight I was chatting with a couple coworkers. We talked about ourselves and other people we were associated with.  I was struck by the way my coworker seemed so similar to the way I've perceived myself in the past, it was a strange haunting, a curiosity and confidence about people, a shared nature (that I often feel detached from now), but though I was envious of the desire to get to know people, I was also struck by the shallowness of it. Getting to know someone, like a trophy. A collected person. 

And there is that in me too. I also want to collect people. I also want to think fondly on my collection.

And yet, there is a distance now. Walls that seem natural and permanent. A disinterest, a forgetting.  A push back where once I might have constructed the bridge. 

And also there is a desire to be that for someone, a piece collected. To want to be known. 

I've been thinking about the "date" I had recently. How disinterested she seemed in me, how it was easier for her to go on about her own thoughts and interests than feigning interest in me.  And I can understand that, its the other side of the same coin. In either case, protecting. I ask myself why I turn the tables and ask questions. Is it humility? Is it curiosity? Is it just that I want the person to really care, if they are asking and its easy to prove they don't if they don't push? Is it that I am bored with my life and don't have an interest in the mundane things I could share?

I've been dissatisfied. I don't know what I want, or where I am going. I feel like I am already dead, and I have to choose a new life, but none of them sound interesting. 

I want to figure it out, but I don't really have the time, space, energy or connection I want in order to do so. 

The thing I want from Grad School: regardless of the subject,  is a time to think and process, a community of people in the same position, a period of growth and change accompanied by others in the same spot. 

Why don't I ask my friends? Because they are not in the same spot. 

I am surrounded by opportunities, that don't seem interesting enough. 

I think I am special.