In the place where I have what it takes

I've got a gig at the Green Room on October 22nd. It's been a while since I've played live anywhere and I want to get back into it, some practice for when the band start playing gigs (although that won't be for a while yet). I'm looking forward to it. I'm really enjoying my songs at the moment, my most recent compositions.

It's two weeks today 'til I start full time work again, so I'm going to enjoy this enormous amount of free time I have at the moment. Well, I'm gonna watch some videos anyway. Have started reading some film books to get back into the academic practice. It was hard at first - y'know, that agitated feeling you get when the reading is really slow but you just have to accept that it's gonna takes ages to read two pages. It makes me think whether I'd be suited to an academic career. I get a real buzz out of the information and I think I'd really enjoy teaching it, but it does take me a long time to process all that info and understand it properly, and I'm very impatient. I suppose I'm better at the big picture as opposed to details, so this may mean my research skills are quite weak - does that disqualify me? Maybe, but I'm not too worried, I'm just looking forward to enjoying the subject for the next two years, then I can decide if I could it full time.

Over the past year or two, I've had an anxiety about time running away from me, and wanting to be on the right career path, but I'm finally beginning to enjoy the present, and not be thinking about the future too much. I don't think in terms of five year plans, so what's the point in worrying about something I can't see. I'm not sure I really believe my life should be about career progression, even though, at the same time, I'm quite ambitious (well, in an idealistic way). I want to achieve things, but it's more like events (making an album, finishing my book), not reaching some kind of plateau. It probably sounds like I've contradicted myself there, and I'm not sure it makes that much sense to me either, but hey, I'm running away from the original thought and can't seem to trace my way back...