Back From The Dead

It's been over a year since I did anything with this blog.  My writing frequency tends to be sporadic, so a lot of times I won't have anything to write, and then I'll just start gabbing.

I'm going to share a couple of things that I've written over the last year or so.  They're both spaced quite a ways apart (one was written in April of 2009 and one was written in August of 2010), but they both speak of the journey that I've been on since I was laid off in March of 2009.  I've copied them both into separate posts so as not to make one huge post.

The first one was written a few weeks after I got laid off.  I had made a decision to take a step back and take stock of where my life is.  Here's the full text of what I wrote.  If you're friends with me on Facebook, you've likely already read this post.

Unsupervised Boredom

Unsupervised boredom can be an interesting thing. It's been happening more and more often in the past few weeks; I can imagine that most people reading this would know why. My continuing bout of unemployment has given me a chance to contemplate where I am, and should be, in my (relatively short) professional career, as well as where it all fits with the rest of my life.

At least that's what I'd like to be doing. Ideally, I'd like to sit back and contemplate, but more often than not I just find myself becoming more and more disillusioned and overly critical of what I see around me, hence (maybe?) the lack of said motivation. Then I'm in a bad mood, pretty soon I'm just bitching for it's own sake and in the end I've completely lost track of what I set out to do here.

Hmm. Maybe I'll just get it all off my chest now and save room for more philosophical ramblings further down. Ok, here goes. WTF is up with:

• Watching Beyonce lower herself to playing with a Nintendo DSi for the sake of a paycheck. The disparity between the two (glamorous Beyonce vs. nerdy Nintendo), makes me wonder just how big the paycheck was.
• Continually seeing the abysmal state of spelling and grammar being displayed by people who (inexplicably) consider themselves "professionals." Sometimes it makes me want to cry.
• Christians who watch "The Golden Compass" and think that it somehow has the power to rob them of their faith just because the author of the source material is an admitted atheist. It's a movie folks. If your faith is that shaken by a movie, maybe you should sit down and take a closer look at it.
• I can't wait for the new Star Trek movie to come out, but can't help but laugh (on the outside) at the fans who judge it as worthless before they even see it because their (obviously superior) ideas on how it should have been done were not considered. William Shatner. SNL. 1986. Look it up.
• I can't abide self pity. At all. Pick yourself up and get on with your life. Or don't, I don't care. I'm not here to listen to your moaning about how life isn't fair, or how nobody gets you, or anything else that adds up to so much boo-hooing.

Right, that's enough of that.

So what does one think about when they're unemployed and can't muster up the motivation to look for a job? Well, questions of self-worth are definitely close to the top, but I'm not going to turn this into a pity party, especially after what I said above. Beyond that, it's allowed me to take stock of my life up until this point. The most pressing issue that comes to mind is whether or not it's worth continuing.

No, I'm not talking about "ending it all." Geez people! I'm talking about whether or not a change of direction is in order. I look around at my apartment and see the the fruits of the last few years of work. I see a TV with 100+ channels, game systems, DVDs, a nice computer with Internet access, drums, a nice car, a clean apartment, and no roommate. On the surface, it's the perfect picture of self-reliance, but if you peel back a few layers (and not even that many layers, just a few is enough), you'll see that all it serves to do is turn me into a hermit. I've spent so much time building this self-contained little box to exist in that I haven't even considered poking my head out once in a while to see who might want to come in and see what all the fuss is about. And no, I'm not trying to be pitying (after my rant above, you can bet I'm going to be very careful to cover my tracks wherever I can), but it's true. The funniest part is, it's not even that much stuff. It's not like I've spent all this time building a legacy that will live for generations after me - it's just a friggin' TV.

Don't get me wrong, I have friends. Good ones too. It's just that I'm usually the one sharing in their life; it's not traditionally been the other way around. If that makes sense. And I'm not blaming anyone, or pointing fingers either.

My chosen profession is not exciting. It's telecom. In recent months before I was laid off, I was becoming more and more bored with it all. It was all the same. Even if I was to move to a different sector of operations, it would still all be the same. I sit at a desk, stare at a computer screen, and try to figure out why some stupid T1 wasn't behaving like it should. Even though I could see upward mobility in the company, the fundamentals of what I was doing now would always be the same, and it was the fundamentals that I was bored with. So why should I be in such a rush to find a new job so soon?

The challenge of it all? I don't get satisfaction from a challenge. I get frustrated. I get satisfaction from completing a task. It's the destination, not the journey. Fix this broken T1? Sure, but the warm-and-fuzzies when I fix it don't come from how challenging the repair was, they come from finishing the repair. This is what technology has become to me - a means to an end. A paycheck to continue building my little self-contained box. So why should I be in such a rush to find a new job so soon?

That's what I love about going to church. I play drums there. Being a musician is so different than working telecom that having both during the week was enough to stave off an eventual burnout. Being able to contribute in such a meaningful way to a cause like worship is awesome and remarkably humbling. And yes (before the coming flood of drummer jokes starts), I am a musician. My influences can be seen in a few different places, but primarily it comes from a desire to use the drums as a musical instrument, not just a "noisy timekeeper", a philosophy echoed by perhaps my favorite drummer of all time, Ted Kirkpatrick. I want to ebb and flow with the rest of the team, to compliment them in what I bring, and also to be complimented by what they bring. I don't want to go there, bang away on the skins until I can barely lift my arms, try my best to look as cool as I can, and then go home. I can come away from a set feeling like I completely blew it (like this morning), and still feel like my presence there was worthwhile. I can't say that about work; not even a little bit. If I feel like I've blown it at work, I usually find myself sitting at home at the end of the day wanting to quit.

So here I sit, with two completely different lives. On the one hand, I have a career that sees me sitting in an office five days a week staring at a computer screen, collecting a paycheck, alone and lonely, with very little chance of an "emotional" future, it seems. On the other hand, I make meaningful contributions to a cause greater than myself that sees influence all across this province, and I have fun while I do it. The biggest difference? It's the journey, not the destination.

So tell me again - why should I be in such a rush to find a new job so soon? Seriously.

Part two is above.