After deducting offs and leaves, I'm left with about 5 days of national chore. However the realization of impending release hasn't exactly set in yet. Although I'm all too mindful that freedom is essentially overrated if you are idle. That is exactly what I intend to dispel with a whole slew of projects in the works: one more short film, driving lessons, university applications, photography assignments, "internship" white paper. Enough to keep those organic transistors humming for a month.
As with any experiential process, this kind of pros and cons reflection seems inevitable near the end of the journey, for the sake of a lesson learnt (if you don't document it, the lesson is lost).
I had spent the most parts of the 1st year dealing with acceptance and humbling oneself. Testing the limits of the mind's capacity for desperation countered with control. Basically, lots of things were just out of my control, and not having the time or freedom to attend to that was downright frustrating, albeit you learnt to accept that as a way of life.
The way I see it, acceptance is not about a path closed, one that you can never walk down again. It is about learning to recognize what such a path to disaster looks like, followed by how best to avoid or approach it in the future. With caution and newly gained expertise of course. But don't always get caught up thinking that you know best, situations always have a way of taking you by surprise. Think Murphy's.
In a way, I have been very lucky with my paths in the national chore division, ending up in this big annual show thing. Mind you, not as a participant, but as the organizer, interacting with many groups of people in the real world outside of the antiquated cocoon house. What this meant was that my second year was spent observing and acquiring some rather real work experience and skills. Namely, how to achieve maximum rewards with minimum efforts. But we actually learnt that back in school, albeit a simpler version without any political dogfights or stunts to pull. Not to mention the people, very interesting. Case in point, be very good at deflecting the majority of useless work while bagging the few high rewards assignments.
I also come off with a greater sense of introspection. Having this much time to think about your goals, you realize there's a great deal of volatility to them caused by time and external opinions. Lastly, I realize that I'm an amalgamation of many individuals, catching a bit of experience, foresight and intuition every here and there. I'm not so original as I think. Perhaps whatever semblance of originality there is resulted from innovation as a necessity. But how often is that?
At the end of the day, the big question stands, was the time worth it? I find it hard to put a resolute no or yes, this is definitely grey area, gain some, lose some. But one thing is for sure, its nothing that which a gap year might also achieve the same outcome. So there we have it. Boomz.
