ThomasDoubts Posted March 14, 2014 Posted March 14, 2014 I thought I'd share my experiences over the past 5-6 weeks, if for no other reason than to physically reproduce the things floating around in my head. I prefer typing to pen&paper, so I might as well post it here right? Maybe sharing my experience will be helpful, or at least entertaining to one amongst you. Roundabouts the end of January, I began what I can only describe as a self-imposed sabbatical from FDR, and it has been incredibly and astonishingly and surprisingly beneficial for me. At first glance, this may seem as odd, or as surprising to you, as it was to me, so allow me to explain. If pressed to describe my existence I would say I've been in a serious life-rut/existential crisis for roughly two years now.(complete with the drinking bird desk ornament, a la Megamind) I could write walls of text describing how I came to be where I am, and I'd enjoy it; probably because I've scarcely got another human being who I can meet in reality and with whom I can feel entirely comfortable speaking freely. However, I won't have you suffer or scoff at the idea of reading walls of text. I'll do my best to condense my thoughts....... but, ultimately I'll fail, and you'll still end up with a wall of text. I say I've been in a life-rut---- How so, you might ask. It began with a woman, as these things often do. I gave my heart to a she-devil and she tossed it into a sausage grinder. This was roughly 4 years ago. What has escaped me until recently, was the fact that while I slept, she'd also detached my testicles and chucked them in the same sausage grinder. Yes, it was I, the International Sex Symbol, who lost his mojo, and waged a war (of non-aggression, of course) to regain it. Ok, maybe I'm embellishing a bit with the International Sex Symbol I was born in 1988. I had two parents. I played outside a lot until I had to go to school. After spending 12 years in school, I was told that if I expected to ever amount to anything in this life, I should continue going to school. So I went to college, played the game, and got a dual degree in Econ/Finance. Since graduating in 2011 I have been seriously lacking in the department of purposeful living. During High School and College I built houses for people to live in, in order to have a little spending money. Since graduating college I've held primarily one job (with several part time gigs on the side): sub-contracting for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.(DC Metro) If you're reading this from NSA headquarters (incidently, a few miles from my home), I swear I didn't do it. Aaaanyhow, that experience was made up of equal parts: insight and misery. I hope it doesn't offend common sense to say so, but often at work I'd be thinking, "I wonder how different, and how similar, this experience is/would be to living in the USSR, for example. The degree of beaurocracy, and the regulatory environment made the whole experience and operation into a farce of galactic proportions. I was enjoying legislative perogatives that required I be paid roughly double what I could command in a comparable position in private industry. This was great for my wallet and destructive for my conscience-- I hadn't earned that, it was simply taken from someone, and given to me. I had no pride, I was ashamed of what I saw when I looked in the mirror, for this reason, and others. Increasingly, I felt I could no longer continue to act as I had been during the day, and in the evening come home and listen to FDR, or evangalize on behalf of anarchism, or free markets, or whatever. I was nothing but a hipocrite and I couldn't fucking stand it. I don't have the words to describe my hatred for hipocracy, and yet, there it is... Try as I may, no amount of literature, or conversation, or knowledge, or drugs, or masturbation, or entertainment could overcome this simple fact: I was a hipocrite, and I hate hipocracy. Extending, I hated myself. I owned that, though it was plain to me that my hipocracy was learned through the experience of being raised by hipocrites. This came to be my existence. Living my boring and repetitive and hipocritical life, day after day, hating myself for what I was, and hating myself for not doing anything to change it, knowing I had the power within me to do so. So one day, not too long ago, wallowing in my own despair, and pity, and insecurity, and fear, and powerlessness, and hopelessness, I was paid a compliment in passing by an old friend I'd not seen in several years. I'm certain that he hadn't the slightest clue what it meant to me, in fact, it probably wasn't even intended as a compliment; rather he was pointing out how much I had failed in life. What he said was this, "You're one of the smartest people I've ever known. I always thought when we were younger, you'd grow up to do something that was just wicked awesome. I gotta be honest man, I've passed you up, you better catch up." I was really flustered by that, and not sure how to respond. I was in a hurry to do something that, in reality didn't really matter to me at all, but I chatted for a minute or two and we parted ways. I wish I had stood in the street and continued talking to him. Anyhow, that night, I sat thinking about what he'd said for hours. Ya know, here's this guy: an older version of the short, scrawny jewish kid who really liked basketball; who wore Volleyball kneepads when we played on a team together as kids because he was too uncordinated to run without falling on himself; the guy who everybody made fun of in school. And he's just pointed out, what a failure I became. It ran over me like a truck. In an instant, I felt repulsed, thinking, "Who the Fuck are you?!" (referring to myself) You're going to let this guy show you up?! Are you fucking kidding me?! If he could, your 10 year old self, would punch you in the face, and kick you in the nuts, if only to provoke some kind of response, or energy, or courage, or passion, or soooomething... Anything. He'd be ashamed of your lifelessness! (Obviously, who cares about basketball. The point I'm making is that I always felt like I was on top of the world til about my early 20's and I just hit a wall of stagnation, and now I'm watching all of these mere mortals, pass me by) So what did I do? I quit my job the next day, and vowed never to return to FDR until I'd satisfied my need to live out my principals. I'm pleased to say that I have done so. The idea of looking for new job, and doing interviews has always caused me great anxiety, in a way that few things ever have. Fueled by an uptick in coffee and nicotine consumption, I did my best to wrestle that fear and anxiety to the ground till I'd squeezed the life out of it, and hopefully I'm not too much worse for the wear. Less than two months ago I was driving a truck full of materials to work everyday, wearing a toolbelt and leaching onto the neck of the taxpayer like a parasite and I fucking hated it. Yesterday I was offered a white-collar position in private industry complete with my own personal private office furnished with a couch and cable T.V, and what appears to be a free, and open and creative environment/culture; one that I'd only ever imagined existed as a possibility for me. I made that happen and I take pride in that. I'm just starting to fear what I could do with a year, and how I'll ever forgive myself if I don't make the best use of that time. It's funny; stress and anxiety and fear can be such beautiful and horrible things. I know that it's not all sunshine and butterflies. I know that this new job isn't and never will be perfect. I know that it will present all kinds of new and interesting and fear & anxiety provoking problems and challenges. I know that the struggle to be a better person never ends. I know all of these things, and I wouldn't have it any other way. For a brief moment though, today I pause to take measure of my accomplishment. I feel like I've proved to myself that I've got some kind of integrity or credibility that makes me worthy of participating in this community. I required that proof, for my own sanity. In recognition of this experience, I think I'll be rebranding myself here, if only as a gesture of symbolic value, marking what I hope to be a transformative event in my life. I intend for this to represent real and lasting change in who I am as a person. Living in the present can be such a difficult to do, but I think I've done so and it's been exhilarating and terrifying and fun and new. I couldn't be more pleased. If you've made it this far, maybe you're thinking, "All this over changing jobs?" You'd be right--- That is the outward facing change. You also couldn't be more wrong--- Changing careers was just a result of me regaining my long lost Mojo, and that was something I desperately needed. It was the result of my first real encounter with my childhood self, maybe, and he took me to the woodshed. I was not being myself, I'd become some crippled, broken, ghostly shadow of my former self. I'd lost all of my self-respect and self-worth and that was made manifest in my profession/employment (and in other ways, no doubt). A two minute interaction of happenstance lit a spark in my soul and I just fed it as much fuel and oxygen as I could manage. I'm pleased to say, I think I've regained my self-respect, and I've done it myself, which is important to me, for better or for worse. Now, I just have to worry about not flaming out, but that's for another day. I'll end with two parting thoughts. First: Never take for granted the power that an idea or a few words can have on someones life. Second: Grab life by the balls, and squeeze until it squeals.
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