Stunned and overwhelmed

When I can no longer focus on what I am trying to do - for work, for school, for my family - I take refuge in the multi-layered world of the web, where it is easy to lose oneself for hours. Today I watched three RSA videos: on the evolution of leadership (for class - not that anyone else will pay attention), on the Future Mind (not hopeful), and on making mistakes (a topic I know all too well).

The I checked Facebook, and Twitter, and gmail, and all the other ways I connect - not so much with people as with ideas and trends and what is going on out there. And as always, I followed a Twitter link from Neil Gaiman and found the link to Christopher Salmon (who grew up in the BC Interior, which was unexpected) and then to Kickstarter...

I am fascinated by the fan-culture explored by Henry Jenkins - he was interviewing a professor from Athabaska U (also in Canada) talking about fan culture, which led me to think about kiva.org and freethechildren and ways people seek to influence the wider world around them - knowing that everything they do is just a drop in the bucket and rather than taking that realization as a sign that they should give up, instead getting their friends to drop a little something into the bucket too until the bucket overflows. And a film is made or a novel published or a well is built... $10 at a time until the job is done.

And this fills me with such hope - such enormous energy - all the feelings that I thought I would find in the programme I am enrolled in. But it only fills me with a deadened sense of "do it the way we've always done it because otherwise people won't take us seriously."

And I say - who cares? Who cares if people take you seriously? Do what you want, break the mould, try something new, make mistakes and learn and grow, make a mess and clean it up and learn something from the doing of it...

I am angry half the time and frustrated all the time, and then I go to my magic mirror on the world and I see people doing so much with so little and I think, "Wait. Why am I taking this course? In this programme? Banging my head against this brick wall with people who really just want me to do things their way (and when I refuse, punish and humiliate me). Do I need this degree? Do I need to be accepted by these peers? Is this important?"

And I have to reluctantly admit: it is. It is important to me to complete - if not this degree then A degree. To be accepted in this world. To have my work acknowledged and accepted. I am too old (and I mean that literally) to throw off the idea that my worth is somehow bound up with what other people think of me.

But I hope my kids will have better ways of dealing with the world.