On the Elusiveness of Personal Satisfaction

What’s the point? What am I after? As you can probably tell from these questions, I’m in the middle of a personal crisis, trying to sort out my life. I’ve been considering dropping out of school, despite being three months from the end of my senior year. This is in part due to my being two credits behind for graduation. Two weeks ago, all I knew was that being in school was making me profoundly unhappy. Over these fourteen days I’ve come to understand why I’ve been so unhappy. Over the next fourteen I hope to figure out what the Hell to do about it.

What it boils down to is a lack of satisfaction with what I do every day. The work is neither too easy nor too hard, but I’ve always been bored by schoolwork. And this week, after seven years of not knowing why, I’ve come to realize that I get no sense of accomplishment from it. I take no pride in good work at school, so I feel very unmotivated to do any work at all. I end up doing just barely enough (sometimes not enough) to pass my classes, and filling my time at home with distractions from my feelings of dissatisfaction, such as television and computer games.

My inclination to drop out of school and look for work stems from my need for a feeling of satisfaction. I wanted to find something to do for a living that would give me that feeling, but I didn’t realize that that was why I wanted to drop out. I felt that it was because school was trapping me, holding me back. In a way, it is, but I have to stay. I can’t explain why, especially since I was so determined to leave so recently, despite everyone telling me not to. But I have to stay and finish.