Mixed Feelings

My ex-boss called last night to ask if I would like to join the planning team again - now that a position is open. I was quite flattered, really, in a sense that he still thought of me, if not of the same calibre as the planner who's just left to travel the world. Or perhaps I'm just a cheap option?

Either way, that homes in my point. Amidst the mild elation, I'm saddened. Why should work constitute such a large part of my sense of self-worth?

Or perhaps this has to do with the lack a of courage to take that direction in life? Maybe I've yet to do something really outrageous, in a counter-conventional, counter-Asian values way, that would justify my "existence".

Reading Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness - "To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should say: 'Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a labourer in Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of elementary physical needs will occupy all your energies.'"

Amen.