But some days I don’t get to this step until noon or later.

On days like today, I wake up early but lounge around my room with my laptop on and my hair unbrushed.  I putter around my kitchen making tea and looking for something to eat.  I think about how I don’t feel like going outside.

On days like today, I am relaxed, but full of yearning.  With the accessibility into other people’s lives made by the convenience of le internet, I spend an ungodly number of hours clicking around strangers’ journals, cv’s, interviews, websites, profiles, photos, and on and on and on.  I think about all the things that they are doing.  I think about all the things they have accomplished.

Then, naturally, I think about all the things I am not doing and all the things I haven’t accomplished, and am not taking steps to accomplish, and maybe am not really interested in accomplishing but would be moderately pleased if I did so just for the right to say I did so.

And time and time again my career friends reassure me that no one our age knows what they want to do with their lives (as my unemployed friends reassure me that now is my opportunity to figure out what I want to do with my life).  Though, knowing that feeling this way is not unique to my situation is poor consolation.

For me, it’s not so much finding purpose.  I have purpose.  And it’s not so much achieving my potential.  I have potential (ha).

It’s that I want more than what I was given.  I want to be smarter than I am, more productive than I can, taller than I grew.  I want to be me without being me.

But where is this coming from?  Who is telling me that I should be more of someone else?  My immigrant parents?  My academic educators?  The television?

Is it just my genetic disposition to be slightly dissatisfied with all that I have?  Doubtful.

On days like today, when I can feel the slow start rolling out from under my comforter, I know that I will be spending the morning yearning. 

I know that it’s not good for me.  And I know that I can’t help it.  I don’t smoke.  I don’t diet.  I yearn.

Maybe I don’t know what I want.  But I know that I want it.