A Crisis of Heart

For the past week, I've struggled to maintain something resembling sanity. At a moment when I least expected it, Life grabbed my shoulders and threw me to the ground in a block that would make even Brian Urlacher wince. My stomach rejected food. My eyes ran from sleep. And my mind... Ah, that tricky little thing. My mind won countless virtual gold medals for each of the myriad mental gymnastics meets I held for a week straight.
Why did I put myself through such anguish, such torture? A crisis of heart. For what seems like the 9th or perhaps 10th time in my relatively brief life, I couldn't understand where I am going. I'm one of those few unfortunate souls who, try as I might, cannot subscribe to a lifelong career without - brace yourself for that ugly, demoralizing, shouldbeafourletterwordifitweren'tforthethreeextraletters word - passion. Financial successes, respect, even sporadic happiness has only temporarily distracted me from what I would otherwise love to forget. I need meaning. I need to feel that what I do is unique to me. Is my own. I need to know I can write sentences with only one word and if that's what I feel, then that's truth. I need to be able to answer the canned high school reunion career question with a passion and pride that I what I do is not just a job but a vocation. There's only one small problem with all of this...

...I don't know what I want to do.