Personal Journal

Drive

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn

Drive

I was talking to a friend of mine who is very smart and very driven. I was telling her she’d do great going back to school because she’s very smart and she has something I don’t: drive.

So where am I in life with my own “drive”. Am I self motivated? Am I lazy?

I really think I’m a lazy sonofabitch. Just LAZY. I think it’s my greatest weakness or character flaw. Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins. I’m probably not quite a sloth. But perhaps in many ways I am.

What I know about myself are the things I do poorly. I tend not to think of things I do well. I’m going to try to think of both now.

One of the things I’ve noticed about myself over the last two or three years is how completely absent a sense of drive is in my work life. I keep finding out about all these people who have less education, less experience, and do less significant work than I, but who are one or two pay grades higher than me. As I learned that, I thought to myself – how utterly absurd that this company will pay them more than me, given the importance of their job versus mine.

Of course, those people tended to get the pay grade promotions that I don’t have through a variety of being in the right place at the right time, and through knowing important people where I (we) work. And of course we cannot leave out the fact that I do less than 8 hours of work a week, even if the scope of what I do is more strategically important. I’ve not felt justified even hinting that I wanted a pay grade promotion at this place because the work I do doesn’t merit one. I just feel the same about the other folks who are “superior” in grade to me. They don’t deserve it either.

But you know, I just don’t care. I have my compromise here. I make enough money to live on, I can come and go as I please, the benefits are good, and I’m certainly not stressed at my job. That’s enough for me. Work has never been, and probably will never be, an important part of my identity. That I have a job and do work – that will be important. But it’s not a part of my identity.

Consequently, I wonder if this fact makes me less ideal a partner to a woman. As I cruised around Match.com and looked at various women’s profiles, I can recall seeing the vast majority of the women I found interesting would say in their profiles that they wanted a man who was “driven” or “ambitious”. I’m not sure what that means, but if it means that the man should be concerned with climbing the corporate ladder, it clearly excludes me.

To be sure, I want to have enough money to be comfortable. But the reality is that in my foreseeable future lifetime, I will never have to stress about money again. I’m not rich, to be sure. But my house payment is cheaper than most upscale apartment rent costs, and I have no debt whatsoever, and I have a healthy cushion in my 401K and in the bank. I’m also not going to put any of that in jeopardy for romance in the future. That comfort is a gift from Jean to me, and I won’t lose it taking risks for love. But I digress.

For me, my ambition focuses around a couple of things that are very simple, at least as I see them.
I want to be a good, moral human being that people will respect and admire. I’m definitely driven to do that. I ask myself a lot of questions: Is this moral? Does this bring good to people? I’m probably falling a little short on philanthropy – no – I know I am. But in my interpersonal dealings with people, I’m succeeding, and I make those people around me who are my friends… I try to make their lives more fulfilling by being a good friend, and by reflecting the goodness I see in them back to them.

And the most important “goal” if you will for my life – perhaps one I already achieved and won’t again, or perhaps that I didn’t and someday yet may, is to be a woman’s whole partner. Maybe I was that to Jean, of course. I really can’t answer that because my objectivity is long since gone on the matter. We had our fights and I made my mistakes, but there’s no doubt in my mind that she was the love of my life, and I feel as though I was hers. I certainly was driven for her. Indeed, a lot of what I consider to be “drive” in life was inspired by her. Her love drove me to be better than the man I was.

I still want to be better than the man I was, even when I was at my height as her caregiver. I think that kind of personal improvement of character is important for a human being. It should continue your entire lifetime. But my drive to search within myself and find areas where growth was needed has been interrupted by Jean’s death. And to be frank, I can feel where it’s receded. I don’t clean the house twice a week. I don’t put the laundry away the same night I wash it. My tables are stacked with crap that I ought to organize and put away. Those kinds of things especially make me feel lazy.

But also my writing. I used to want to write books, and I’ve more or less told myself that if I never do, I’ll be okay with that. I’m a good enough writer to make myself happy, even if I haven’t made a place in my life for writing fiction. That continues to be elusive.

But what should I give myself credit for, in terms of being a person who has “drive”?
I’m learning to kayak. Because I want to kayak. For fun, and for health, and for the promise I made to Jean.
I’m bettering myself in health with exercise and diet (not so much that the last 5 weeks).
I am working on a variety of gaming projects for the local hobby store to make the gaming more fun for everyone.

I may or may not go back and get a master’s degree. I think I probably will, but since I’m lazy, I’m not likely to look in on it in time to be enrolled before Fall 06. And maybe, as another friend of mine says, I need to take things very slowly since Jean’s death has had such a profound effect on how I interact with the world now.

I have always felt like there is very little in this world that I care about. There is so very little that seems to be important to me. It’s the primary reason that I wish I had been the one who died instead of Jean. There was so much that was important to her, and I was happy to play a side role in the journey of her life’s work. I felt like my fulfillment came through helping her achieve her fulfillment. I really did.

I’ve never wanted to be a No. 1 kind of guy – a leader. I’ve wanted to be a leader’s dependable right-hand man.

Jean’s flowers are growing nicely. I deserve a little credit for that. And her cats are healthy and happy, and I deserve some credit for that. But that’s not drive.
I think a person is supposed to be driven, and I don’t feel that I am.
And that bothers me an awful, awful lot.
That makes me feel worthless, and ashamed.
But I have no fire to change the world. I don’t care enough about it to, and I never have and I never will. I guess the exception to that is recognizing that if I had had to climb Mount Everest to save Jean’s life, I’d have done it. But only for her, and no one else.
All that I “burn” to do in the world is to be the kind of man that my god will be proud of. I don’t think that requires me to get a promotion, or to get a Master’s Degree, or to learn to roll a kayak. It requires me to be consistent in how I treat people, to be fair in how I think of things in the world, to be just in my dealings, to be open in my heart to giving and receiving love, to keep my word, to smile and to help others smile. To always search to understand the difference between right and wrong and to act accordingly.

I don’t consider that drive.
I consider that “duty”.

On the eve before Jean’s first missed birthday, I can’t possibly use any words to describe how desperately I need her to hold me.