On the Subject of My Profession

I am working too hard and yet I am never working hard enough. Outcomes are down to the luck of the draw. I only believed in hard work; I never left anything to chance. But now I know that everything is down to chance.

Days seem repetitive, mundane; an indistinguishable blur — the daily commute, the same sensory input down the familiar path. I am often lost in my own head.

There is autonomy, but there is also an unspoken expectation, a cloud of guilt that seems to hang over me wherever I go; that tells me I am unworthy, a failure, a nobody, a Nothing. Next to these Giants: distant ones that I read about in books and journals, proximate ones that sit two feet away.

I know there is something in me that I can offer to the Universe, and yet the fruits of my labour have yielded nothing.

It frightens me: the system, the enterprise, the wholeness of the invisible mass in which I am a dispensable speck. My insecurities echo within the space where everyone is fighting just to stay alive.

And yet I am drawn to the lure, the romanticism, of the undiscovered and the undiscoverable; the sense of the mysterious. I enjoy conversing in Sciencese, in the lab, at parties, and on the street. I derive a sense of pride when I tell others that I am a scientist, and am met with surprise, admiration, curiosity, and caution.

I feel an urgency, a pressing need to always be doing more, more, MORE; and yet, I am incapacitated by a mental paralysis.

Am I driven by a deep sense of purpose or by insanity?

Perhaps the two are actually the same thing.

I constantly question why I do this, and yet I cannot seem to leave.