Twelve years after I finished high school, I earned a bachelor’s degree. Every day of those twelve years, I felt it’s lack. I wanted that BA. I deserved that BA. I should have it ALREADY!

Until I did.

The wind that pushed me my whole adult life vanished. While I was proud of the accomplishment, I looked over my shoulders for something. I didn’t know this world anymore.

This was a change I’d chased and once achieved everything went quiet.

What now?

Thomas Kuhn noticed a pattern for this “everything changed” situation. The Structure of Scientific Revolution, published in 1962, tracks how the provable and reliable shifts.

Science is definitely repeatable, and therefore reliable. It happens again and again in the same way. The sun rises, and that apple falls when I drop it. Water is wet.

Most of the time.

Don’t get too comfortable. Things are rock solid reliable until people –scientists—start to notice where it isn’t.

Once an aberration is seen, they multiply. Why? Maybe I don’t understand the rules. Maybe I need another rule that bring it all into a working system again.

Then it seems like the system is broken, and a whole new one is needed.

I’d spent time on that broken system. There is good stuff in it! Surely if I jiggle the handle and…

It’s clear it is used up. I’m going to have to learn a new map. Kuhn calls it a paradigm shift.

After my college degree, I found something else to push for. It took some time. It was a long time ago. The pattern is repeating again.

This is the part where I know I don’t know.

Yet.

Eerie silence fills the space.

I’m going to have to look around for a system to use. I know I’m going to have to figure out what is next for me, after the last several years. I was really good at a lot of things that don’t appeal to me anymore.

I’d like to fill that silence by laughing at myself. Here it is again. I’ll look in the forgotten places and make something new.