I’m not totally sure why this is, but I find it fascinating entertaining the mental image of me in a Lexus ES or a Mercedes E-class. I even go so far as to go to relevant manufacturer websites and spec out the car I’d want to buy, if I wanted to buy one, and sometimes to search inventories and scope out the monthly payments.

But it got me thinking just now, as I found myself contemplating the monthly on a luxed-out Taurus SHO and comparing it to what I have available now and what I’m paying on my Altima, and I realized that the interest in cars is mostly an interest in commute comfort. Right now I’m doing pretty well … I’ve got good AC, good heating, comfy seats and good performance, pretty respectable audio system, satellite radio. That’s really all I’m asking for. But the entertaining other car ideas thing strikes me as a tradeoff.

See, I’m living in a situation where my rent and utilities are relatively low and the quality of the place I live is relatively high. If I stayed here indefinitely, I’d likely in the future want to scope out upgrades to my ride to and from work (and just in general), but if I only stay here a while longer and then move even closer to work, my driving would be a smaller part of my day, so I’d be less interested in trading up on it. But my living expenses would almost certainly be dramatically increased.

So there’s the question: does it make sense to sink your money into the present and near future, slowing your rate of savings in exchange for a solution to an immediate trouble, or are you better off putting your money in savings and buying the dream-house sooner?

I mean, obviously, should I survive to see that bright future, it’d be better to be prepared for it than not. But tomorrow is guaranteed to no man, so maybe it’d be better to be a little spoiled?

Regardless, I’m in a holding pattern right now. I’m around 3 months ahead on my car payment, but that’s still less than 60% of the way there. I’m still at least a couple months away from being done with my student loan (hoping I can still meet the birthday no-student-loan target, but it’s iffy, I might opt to buy a couple things instead). I just signed another 1 year lease extension. That means I’m still at least two years (and more likely three) away from having anything remotely resembling a meaningful down payment on a house around here, so it’s not like I’ve got any great situation-change options waiting for me. But it’s still interesting to entertain the possibilities. Shall I shop for an Infiniti? Do I find a condo in reach? I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach…

So I’ve been debating with myself. Do I give away the many small chapters of my life’s story, all the memorable things, all those banal snapshots, all those random images seared into my being? Or do I keep that part of myself private?

If I keep it private, I risk having what might be a wealth of instructive anecdotes from my childhood wither and fade, as I get ever farther removed from those experiences. But if I make those stories public, maybe I risk rendering my whole existence transparent and banal. Would I be better off reserving those stories for some discussion that I think they might be relevant to, even knowing that for many of them, that day will never come?

Are my formative memories fair game? Should they be as a masterwork on display for all to share? Or should they be precious gems hidden in the mattress, hoarded, known only to those we most trust, and only then in part? Would sharing that much about myself enhance or diminish my narrative?

I guess it comes down to a more fundamental question. As a person with a fairly rich intellectual life, how much of that do I want to really share with the world at large? Is there value in maintaining a certain mystique? And does that value outweigh the potential detriments of coming across as shallow by merely not exposing whatever depth is there? Is it better to be perceived as superficial, concealing the depths to which I might plunge, or to reveal both the full extent of my depths and, implicitly, the full extent of the limits of them?

I’m … still going back and forth on it.

My theory, though, is that everyone has something they’re like that with. Everyone has their “thing” … that pursuit which, given the choice and the elimination of possible negative consequences, they’d do all the time.

I’ve come to begin understanding mine. It’s not any of the usual suspects … not liquor nor food nor tv nor games. Those things are, to varying degrees, things to fill the spaces between my own specific drive.

See, the thing that keeps me going is rational engagement. I don’t care where it comes from, whether it’s from an informed debate with me as a participant, or disabusing some poor victim of some insane notion of theirs, or being the victim of someone else’s lecturing, or reading books or watching things on TV. But especially watching and listening to that stuff…

So I’m trying to find things that satisfy that rationalist bent. Whether it’s watching a diatribe by some political commentator or a recording of a distinguished guest’s talk at a conference or gathering, I can’t get enough of it.

I’m looking for more of that. Lectures by engaging intellectuals who have something to say… shows that encourage you to “turn on” … in short, frank, direct and honest discussion. Now taking suggestions…

It’s interesting though. Now that I’m a full-time employee with a permanent position, I’ve sort of got a different mindset that I’m adjusting to.

See, when I was a student, I was working toward a specific, temporal goal. Even with setbacks, as long as I kept working at it and didn’t fail out, graduation was essentially a temporal inevitability. I always knew it was up ahead, always knew I was working towards some specific goal, some time at which things would resolve themselves if only I could hang on and keep it together until then.

Then I graduated. The temporal inevitability came and went. I survived, I made it, I crossed that line. And I looked ahead, and found another line: finding a full-time job.

I was pretty much always confident that I could get a job. I’m smart, I’m attentive, I’m friendly and generally easy to get along with, and I’ve got pretty absurdly good technical skills. I wasn’t always confident where I would get a job, but the fact of the matter never left me. Working was another temporal inevitable. It was, in my mind, an irrevocable fact that I would at some point in the indeterminate near future get a job.

And get a job I did. I accepted the CACI job in the end of July and started there in September, after really seriously starting the job hunt in September and having to basically choose between two possible places to go. And when I started there, it was as a contractor.

As a contractor on a limited-term contract-to-hire setup, I knew that it was basically inevitable that I would become a full-time employee. Of course, that turned out to be wrong, CACI turned out to be a bad fit for me, and got hit by a nasty budget crunch that caused my contract to get squeezed out. But I spent 8 years in college. I’m used to setbacks. And after a day or so of being confused and disoriented, I stood up and started searching for jobs, regrowing the sense of inevitability that I’d find a job after a couple of very positive, very successful interviews. And find a job I did, as a contractor again. This time on a 3-month instead of a 6-month, but the same deal: temp to perm.

And 3 months went by like nothing. I guess if I can spend 5 months at CACI being bored to tears and have it feel like an eternity, the 3 months just evaporating in front of me was a pretty good indicator that Mitre was a better fit. And then they made me a full time offer that was slightly better than what I’d initially negotiated, and I accepted, and became a full time employee. Again, all these events, to me, had a certain inevitability to them. I knew that it would happen. There was always room for doubt, but there was also always a sense that this was definitely going to happen, at some point. If not here, then somewhere else.

So now I’ve crossed that line. I’ve got a real position without an expiration date. It’s at a company consistently rated pretty high on the “best places to work” lists. It’s got great benefits, great vacation policies, and a healthy culture that really fits me. Things are great.

But now I’m faced with a problem. The only thing I see in the future that I’m confident about, that I see as inevitable is my own death, and that’s not for a long time. I don’t have a milestone to wait for anymore.

See, the last … I dunno, 27 years or so, I’ve been waiting for things. Waiting around to get into elementary school. Waiting to get out of it. Waiting to get out of middle school. Waiting to learn to drive. Waiting to get out of high school. Waiting to finish college. Waiting to get a permanent job. It’s so easy to justify killing time, wasting it, watching it slip by, knowing that the things you want to do are essentially inevitable. But now I am starting to feel guilty about it, because I feel like my time-wasting is finally, actually wasting it.

The momentum is gone. I don’t have anything pulling me forward anymore, so if I want to do anything before I die I’m going to have to do it on my own motivation. There’s nothing else. It’s a little disconcerting.

Maybe it’s time to build my own fire.

So about a block away from my house, there’s a wooded area that apparently used to be called Polinger Park, but is now apparently called Anderson Park. And through this park runs a little brook. I don’t know where it comes from, but I suspect it starts at the pond at Montgomery College, which I suspect may be spring-fed.

I walked down into the valley and explored a little today, and found no clearly defined paths past a couple feed into the woods. But it was walkable, with a pretty standard-issue forest floor lined with a spongy covering of accumulated fallen leaves and decayed wood. Lots of little undergrowth plants were just starting to grow, getting buds and shoots going. The trees were pretty typical too, with some old-growth canopy trees, some younger trees fighting with the old growth for light, and trees that had fallen and decayed.

I wandered down into the stream bed, where I noticed that parts of the stream had little minnows in it. There’s also a constant little waterfall spilling over an old concrete barrier connected to an erosion-exposed manhole sarcophagus with graffiti on the side. It’s … desolate and beautiful at the same time.

You know, staying on the paved paths, I had no idea where the storm drains on my street drained to. But now I know, they all run down into that little valley, into this little rock-bottomed creek with light random litter strewn about it, and eventually that stream links up with Upper Watts Branch stream, and trickles out into the Potomac, and ultimately into the Chesapeake. The water that I watched falling down a little concrete ledge ultimately ends up flowing where it does. That’s … sort of neat, you know? A couple of gallons a minute of the water rushing down the Potomac originated a couple hundred feet from my house.

Anyway, I was thinking how nice it would be to take pictures of what I was seeing. A lot of really pretty sights down in that little streambed. Erosion makes for interesting pictures, I tell ya. So I was thinking “I’ll go back tomorrow and do that”

But tomorrow it’s going to rain, which means that (1) the light’s not going to be the same, and (2) the whole area’s going to go from a fairly firm walking surface to a giant mudslick — at least down near the stream. That’s if the runoff from the rain doesn’t upgrade it from brook to creek, at any rate. And in a week, the plants will have sprouted, and the area’s going to be more impassable, and different looking. In the meantime, I’ll have work, and thus no chance to wander down there and re-explore. By the time I get down there again, it’ll have gone from what it is to what it will be.

Part of me feels like this was a missed opportunity — one of those “F/2.8 and be there” moments, if you will… where to get the pictures you want to get you need to have the camera with you, find the moment, and shoot the moment. Neither spend your time fiddling with the camera while the moment passes, nor spend your time cameraless while the moment’s there.

A bigger part of me feels like the “be there” part was more important than the “f/2.8″ part… and that I was probably more in the moment because I didn’t have a camera with me to try to frame pictures of it.

Anyway, it was a good day regardless. I think I’m going to try to do more exploration around here. The world is a really rich place, especially when you venture just a little out of the paved and mowed paths you usually walk.