Out of Step

The curator of the Something Beautiful photo-blog recently wrote:

I have learned the hard way that in some respects I’m pretty different from the majority of folks. I’ve found, over and over, that when I do the mental shadow-boxing exercise (i.e., “What would I do if I were in that person’s situation?”), I frequently come up with a result that bears little resemblance to what that other person actually winds up doing....I am an unmarried, childless, apartment-renter with an inexpensive car; I am compelled to be creative; I have had an unusually varied career.

To which I commented:

I think we must be constituted very similarly, because I could make checkmarks next to almost all the points you list! At 52, I also am single (quite happily; LTRs have not proven to agree with me); childless (unless you count pets, currently a cat and a rabbit); and a life-long renter. I’ve changed careers and jobs quite a bit, and although I’ve spent most of the past 16 years in education, even during that period I took a time-out to try commercial real estate brokerage for a couple of years. I’ve lived all over the U.S., and now I’ve come to Korea to teach ESL (at a private academy to start; later at a university, I hope).

Like you, I have come to realize that the factors that motivate most of my peers’ decision-making — marriages and romantic relationships, children, career management, home ownership, commitment to place, religion, investments — simply don’t exist for me in the same way. My life has always been essentially about my interests and enthusiasms, which range from the life of the mind generally, to my animals, to more epicurean and indulgent pleasures such as fine menswear and good beer.

Dick Cavett once complimented Edward Gorey for creating a completely individual lifestyle in a world in which most people, no matter what their original intentions, seem finally to capitulate to the norm. I’m hardly a Gorey, but I do feel some kinship, and I feel it equally with what you have written here.