Perhaps the job I work won't be so bad after all.

It isn't that I particularly enjoy the work. It's nasty and takes a lot out of me physically.

That being said, it actually kind of works for the ascetic side of me, which has grown quite a lot.

Simple chores during the day, two simple meals a day, and I still have enough time on my hands to write, reflect, study, and apprentice in holy orders . There are times- like today- when that's about all I need, and my need for distractions and entertainments and nice little gadgets is subdued to almost nothing. I find I've been feeling that way more and more lately.

That doesn't mean I won't look for better work, but it does change how I consider my situation right now. I'm only held back by how much or how little I do with my spare time, and I'm increasingly thinking I like the prospect of putting the bulk of my energy into continuing my efforts, both academic and spiritual, and learning to appreciate a simple life so that success, if I ever find it, doesn't ruin me.

I think I've learned an important lesson about dignity and self-worth. I find that the noblest form of self-worth is not to say "I am too good for this task," but rather to say "this lowly task will not diminish me because I am more than that." And when you think that way, the gruntwork becomes less of a distraction from your long-term plans.

If you think in terms of being too good for a task, you basically pay homage to the opposite proposition, that you are entirely undeserving of anything. Ultimately, that line of thinking determines a person's value by the lowest common denominator of their experiences and actions. It's just like the polarities in a narcissistic personality; it can manifest both as self-deprecation or as self-aggrandizement, but the common root is an unstable foundation for one's self-image.

More than that, it's setting yourself up to be undermined by a cycle of attitudes and actions informed by bitterness, and bitterness is a poor foundation to build anything on. That was part of my problem for so many years, a tendency toward pathological bitterness at not having anything going for me despite my skills and intelligence. It didn't occur to me that a lot of what was letting me down in my life was a nasty attitude toward work informed by a bitter rejection the social attitude that even the tiniest shred of respect has to be earned from nothing and that people are considered worthless until they can prove otherwise. My greatest epiphany of late is that I don't have to argue from a point of bitterness to reject that idea!

At any rate, having just been through nearly five years of complete imbalance in nearly every aspect of my life, it's a great relief to experience what may be termed "stable poverty" again. My life is really not so bad.