Saturday, May 17, 2014

Reason For Leaving

When one reflects back on life, they can only see what they accomplished so far. Sometimes there is a filter that makes one blind to truths that should be evident. Sometimes one realizes that choices could have been better made, and risks however adverse, attempted. In the case of mine, I feel like I have settled for mediocrity for too long. I see myself compromising all the time with the vision of the person I want to be. Of course, one may counter "one always has to compromise", but this isn't always acceptable to someone like me. Someone who constantly strives for self improvement (even if I fall short often enough) and wants to move on to bigger, bolder, and better things. The truth is, I am not doing what I intended to do in my life when I was a child, imagining my life at my age now. When I was 6 years old, I wanted to be a scientist and inventor. More an inventor who would be praised for innovative and groundbreaking inventions. I was really into science fiction and wanted to invent a time machine, among other things. One thing I actually tried, as a father and son experiment, was to design and build a helicopter powered by pedals like a bicyle. There's always been this drive, though maybe seemingly misguided, to achieve and be recognized. When my brother got the videotape of Iron Maiden's Live After Death for his 17th birthday and I started watching it nights he was out when I stayed overnight at my father's house, my goals changed to wanting to be a "Rock Star". I really have never wavered from this dream, even as I get older. I never gave up writing or recording music, and occasionally, though not nearly enough, playing it live. Its the one thing I never really compromised on, and the one thing that never went away. That said, its increasingly difficult for one to have a career in music nowadays, no matter what the sacrifices made. But that's really not the issue at hand, or what I'm referring to. I will continue to work hard to get things going in this area more than they ever had. There is another compromise I've had to make, over and over again, and had to be miserable in life as a result. That is the idea of working for someone else. I was a mediocre student growing up. I only barely slid by both high school and getting my associate's degree. I didn't get my driver's license until 24 years of age, and there are a great many days where I've only been given to the mediocre. But by wanting an extraordinary life, I don't think I'm overcompensating for the mediocre. I've been pretty hard on myself, and I've been lazy. Those two are a brutal combination for anyone who wants to live a full life. It can be said a lot of my failures in life could be blamed on anxiety disorders or bad choices. In my age though, now, I've realized that I want to go into unventured terrority, to really go beyond what I've thought possible for myself. I've been at that edge before. I don't like sharing this much, but my life in relationships with the opposite sex was beyond mediocre for a long time. But in 2011 I decided I would make a change for the better in this area. Now there are other reasons which I won't go into here which make this difficult at this present time, so it should be said I'm only talking about my (recent) past. I took initiative because it had been 8 YEARS since I had had a proper girlfriend. And I would continue to fool around with an ex once every couple of years, but even by then, that had ran its course. So February 2011, I decided, that was the year I would have my most serious relationship. Most of my efforts came from online (something which has haunted me as far as a crutch that I'm wanting to change now (as soon as some other quibbles are out of the way, or cleared up). Nevertheless, after having dates with 9 girls and dating 2 of them steadily, I had a real girlfriend. I had put my mind to it, and even wrote down the aspects of who I wanted which eerily came true. Even the month I met her was something that almost seemed pre-planned. Unfortunately, after about 7 months or so, we had broken up, but even as the specific relationship itself doesn't seem as alluring as it once was, the fact that I had planned a change in my life so drastic still stands as an example of something I had put my mind to and had gotten. This happened with a few other things in my life that year as well, and it stands as a testament to preserverance and what some call the "law of attraction". Flash forward to now. There is a gnawing thing within my soul that is making me really want to leave cubicle jobs, call center jobs, and jobs directed by other people other than I, ONCE AND FOR ALL. I will be blogging shortly here about my regrets about not going to full on university (not having a bachelor's or higher as far as a degree). And this post may seem similar to that in some ways. But my whole lifestyle needs a major change. The schedules I work at these jobs, the food I eat, the way I feel about myself could be worse. I could live in a third world country, or have to do slave labor at some factory making smartphones or something for 12 hours a day in a sweatshop or starving in some North Korean gulag. But let's face, I haven't lived up to my potential in life. And right now, I really am not doing what I'm passionate about during the day. I never cared about insurance, I never cared about cell phones or PDAS, I never cared about being a cashier, or even a bouncer (that much anyway lol). The only success I've had at all my jobs is when I feign the passion that I don't feel, and I feel dead inside as a result. I try to advance every once in a while, and when I get turned down its like them (the companies I've worked for) are only twisting a knife slowly in a wound that won't heal, a wanderlust that won't be satiated by simply being the docile, mediocre but passable, worker bee that I've been. Its like Chuck Pahlunik's worst nightmares brought to life in my head, and I have no way out. I try to do the best I can, and I feel like a gerbil on a treadmill, vainly trying to do the day to day activities that only bring me more into the doldrums. The repetitive tasks of pretending to care, trying to take the constant abuse from customers that the customer service field brings, as my self-esteem gets lower and lower, being dragged down by the endless monotony of doing the same thing over and over again and going nowhere. I see those around be, drowning their lives in diet soda, obesity, and servitude, and I feel sad that I am just one of them. Of course these people are human and many of them have aspirations, dreams, kids and goals, but many are only going to be cubicle beings living a cubicle life. I feel like I could have been so much more, but I still have a fighting spirit and an attitude that its not too late to change. Its not too late to go after what I want in life, and not too late to try to work and strive higher. And with this, I say, I am making a concerted effort to get out now. I am working on websites to get me self employed, I am working on my music even with a newfound effort and passion. I am spending time brainstorming ideas, reading ebooks, setting up different buttons on websites, studying different fields of study, looking into different options. I know that one of these things will pan out, one of these things MUST pan out. I am doing meetup groups, studying some esoteric fields of study (everything short of going back to official college but more on that in a future post). My goal is to be out of the cubicle on or by December 31st 2014. I look forward to the life of being self employed and having some automated systems making me money. I look forward to working hard, but being able to take breaks when I want, go where I want, when I want, without being dragged down, and feeling WORN down when I get home. I feel too shitty and full of hate from being yelled and prodded at by what I do and the mindless tedium of what I do to go to the gym a lot of the time. I just go home and watch netflix or hulu, and sit in my bed eating nachos and just feeling like a stinking piece of filth. I just want to relax and watch Law and Order and forget the world and the world I've made. But this can serve me no more. My plan is to go after what I want to do in life, but its hard to motivate myself when I've had these bad habits so long. The bad habits and the new way of life I want to live are incompatible, and so is the idea that I will glide into being self employed. So my full intention is that anything I've talked about (I've talked about a lot of the changes I've wanted to make for years) I will go full on 100 percent into this year, no matter the cost. I'll dive head first into the great unknown of doing everything I've ever wanted to do, and not rest until I've achieved everything. I've set dates, exact dates before for goals and I've reached them, and I know that usually when I fully commit to them, they come into being. I fully intend on December's goal coming to fruition.

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