{"id":402,"date":"2008-09-24T11:21:25","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T16:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=402"},"modified":"2008-09-25T01:26:39","modified_gmt":"2008-09-25T06:26:39","slug":"free-to-wander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=402","title":{"rendered":"Free to wander"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThere was a time
\nWhen my heart was free to wander
\nAnd I remember as I sing
\nThis hobo song.
\n– John Prine<\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yesterday a friend of mine was describing to me what sounded like an existential crisis. He wasn’t sure why he was doing what he was doing in his work. I recognized the feeling – I have had just that feeling in the past. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. One day you just start to think “Why, exactly, am I doing this? Is it for the money? For the pursuit of truth? To help others?” And I remember that when I went through this, I would start to waver, to wonder what any of it meant.<\/p>\n

And today it occurred to me, listening to my friend and thinking about what he was saying, that I haven’t had that feeling in a while. Right now all the things I am working on feel as though they have a compelling purpose, a momentum and a reason to exist that drives forward not just the activity itself, but also my own sense of purpose in doing them.<\/p>\n

Thinking about this, and wondering why it is so, I realized that nowadays I put a lot of effort into choosing the things I do, much more effort than I used to. There was a time when I would see something interesting to do, like a bright shiny train pulling into the station, flags waving and whistle blowing, and I would just hop on, like a hobo wanderer out to see the world, figuring that if nothing else I would enjoy the ride.<\/p>\n

Now I check train schedules, I look at destinations, and I ask myself whether I really want to take this particular journey. Knowing where I am going, and why, turns out to make the trip far more satisfying. And when it comes time to board another train, I’m now much more likely to pick a good one. I am not saying that this is a better way of being or of doing things than the hobo way, but it seems to be working much better for me.<\/p>\n

I know it sounds trite, but that doesn’t make it any less true: Wandering can be great fun, but it’s amazing how freeing it can be to have some idea of where you are going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a time When my heart was free to wander And I remember as I sing This hobo song. – John Prine Yesterday a friend of mine was describing to me what sounded like an existential crisis. He wasn’t sure why he was doing what he was doing in his work. I recognized the … Continue reading “Free to wander”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}