I feel a little desperate to write. I never imagined that the world could be so lonely, and I never imagined that after having had so much practice with life that I would have such an inexorable predilection for putting myself at every chance into what usually ends up being the worst possible--or most disadvantageous--situation among the choices as I've understood them. It's darkly amusing and still hope-crushing to look back on my path and discover that practically every step I've taken has somehow accidentally been the wrong one; that practically every step has led to more stress, more resentment, more indebtedness; and has generally led me to being less of a husband, less of a dad, less of a friend.
Of course, that doesn't mean that no good has come from any of it, nor that there's no way to imagine that God will finally bring a goodness out of it all greater than the darkness. In other words, it's not impossible to imagine that there could finally be a point to it all. It's only that it is disheartening to consistently see that every time I have been faced with a decision for what amounts to a life-changing opportunity, I choose--even after patiently weighing it out and praying about it and trying to discuss it with friends, etc.--to go in a direction that shackles us further, weakens our family further, takes me away from home more often and for longer, and costs us more money. The overwhelming net feeling from this is that I know beyond the possibility of doubt that I have no agency in my own trajectory: I control nothing--if for no better reason than that I was never given (or I grossly miscalculated, if you like) the actual likeliest outcomes of my decisions. But the darkly elegant, darkly amusing piece of it is that when I plot all the points that have led me to be in whatever situation I find myself in, each of those points is or is directly related to a choice I have made--such that looking back on them myself, I cannot but think that I've been on a subconscious mission to sabotage myself. Amusing that even those opportunities that come down the pipe as "no brainers"--the sort where "I'd have to be an idiot not to jump on this" ends up being just another step into perdition, into relentless, consuming mediocrity.
