I read a story sometime in high school about a woman who carefully balanced her thoughts amongst the people she cared about, concentrating on holding up the airplane of the one person flying to America as well as thinking about her grandchildren being safe, and so forth, all at once. I do wonder sometimes if one's thoughts and energy can have any direct effect upon the world. But either way, it is disconcerting to find that as soon as I let my guard down and stop focusing so carefully on everyone else, I find that bad things are happening, people are ill, and so forth. Coincidence, surely. Mostly I think it's just a shock to realize that when I'm not paying enough attention, it's pure luck if I ever find out if someone's not all right.

So here is the quandary:

I know, I have a year left of college and I shouldn't exactly be frantic about what I want to do with the rest of my life. Especially considering I don't believe in the whole doing one thing for one's entire life thing anyway. I'm already planning for my first and second midlife crisis, and so forth. I don't know if I'll ever be able to really decide on one thing. But, I do need to decide on something to start out with, one way or another.

So. I am trying to choose between two things. (Yes, the things that I didn't dare write down a few posts ago, I don't know whether because I was afraid of jinxing myself somehow, or because I was afraid of being laughed at. For a long time I couldn't tell anyone either -- how many times did I stand silently at work, recasing book after book, not managing to ask my boss about her job because for some reason the words got caught somewhere in my throat? I felt incompetent at life those days. How hard can it be to ask a question?)

One of them is being a book conservator. One of the most fulfilling things I've done at Colgate is work in the conservation lab. It's something I've been fascinated by since watching Reading Rainbow when I was little, when they had an episode which involved fixing old books. I love the feel of glue under my fingers; I love the transformation from a set of bound pages to a real book with a cover after I recase something. And I want to be able to do more than just that, more than our little Colgate lab can do.

But also, I want to be a musical instrument repair person. (Yes, I love fixing things.) I've always enjoyed dealing with the little intricacies of clarinets, putting springs back, tightening screws, and testing keys to figure out what wasn't working right. I've always wanted to be able to repad and recork. In my equipment managing days I liked even arranging for things to be repaired, organizing our instruments and making notes about what needed to be done with each of them. But I really want to be able to fix them myself.

So after college what do I do? Three years of school in Texas for book conservation; one year probably in Minnesota or Iowa for musical instrument repair. Each one has its pros and cons. From what I gather there are jobs in musical instrument repair while there aren't so many in book conservation. Musical instrument repair allows me to get into the world of work faster and with less schooling, which may be good because I've felt like escaping from school a lot these days. On the other hand book conservation keeps me closer to the world of academia, which is useful in that I might want to get back into that someday. And the program requires that you have a bachelor's degree in something already, so I wouldn't be "wasting" the time that I've spent at Colgate. But then, musical instrument repair would keep me closer to the world of music, which is also very important to me.

Both are skills I'd really like to have and I don't want to sacrifice either one. But eventually I'll have to choose, and I'm not entirely sure how. I suppose in the end it could easily come down to "program I get accepted to" or "ability to pay for it." But if it all goes my way (oh, semicharmed life) and I really have to choose, then what?

Thoughts?

earlier -- later