Starting over
“The splendid thing
about falling apart
silently...
is that
you can start over
as many times
as you like.” ― Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos
How many times have you committed to reinvention?
Or, put it another way, how many times have you decided that this life could be remade in a different image?
For me, the thing that’s vexed me since the first day I stepped across the threshold of my younger days, is how to square my protestant work ethic (i.e. earning a living) with living true to a higher calling.
In real-world language that means I’ve ‘competed’ in various work environs — e.g. engineering, recruitment, law, consulting — but have never found peace in my heart.
Duh!
The problem is the problem. . .
We’re not meant to and neither is the apparatus designed that way; to wit: when you work the classic 9 to 5, which does its best to annihilate your genius or stuff it into the compressed shell of conformity — otherwise known as a wage slave — it’s no wonder that so many people ‘hate’ what they do, and do so only for the money. But of course, as creatures of adaptation, we make the best of our situation. I recognise there exist a few people — call them artists — who aren’t able to comply with a moribund set of rules but for my part, save possibly for one person, all the people I know and have ever known work for and have worked for a living.
In my case, I can see now that this spiritual malaise explains some of my rather off-track behaviour. It’s not just that I want an answer to an oh-so-obvious question or am willing to challenge the status quo, it’s the fact that my true self is, at least in part, making itself known to the more facile/faux part of my psyche.
There was one moment, as long ago as August 2010, where I cut the Gordian knot on my career and went, as they say, solo. For a short while it was truly blissful, liberating and I was like a different man. But the cold, hard reality of our financial situation quickly took hold and I realised that earning 50% less than before, even where I tried my hardest to reduce our outgoings, would still leave us in a position where we’d run out of money, run up significant debt and there was no one coming to rescue my sorry ass from the situation.
And so, you guessed it, I succumbed to the marketplace again and I’ve been there ever since.
But I’m back here again; namely, I’m ready to pull the plug on the current gig. That’s not quite accurate: I have a six-month contract that ends at the end of the year and right now I have nothing to replace it with. My plan is to take at least a month off to do some walking and travelling — probably not to Chicago now (it was a Nelson Algren inspired thing). I need to do this for so many reasons, not least the fact that I haven’t had any proper time off for probably five years. Oh sure, I’ve had a week off here and there but it hasn’t done anything to reconnect me to and reconstitute my artistic DNA. I’m not sure that that’s why I need a break to be honest; it’s more likely the case that I’m sick to death of hearing myself say the same thing which is vapid, tepid and suffosed with a lazy dread of not wanting to say the wrong thing. I don’t expect to and neither will I be seeking out people during my break — silence is its own reward — but it would be wonderful to meet a few people and not to have open the conversation with, “So what is it you do?”
What happens after my break I don’t yet know and whilst I’m pumping out CVs into the legal marketplace, I’m not doing so with any relish or desire to find another job but just to know I’m doing something. Truth be told, I would rather not practice law or have anyting to do with it, but having done it for this long, I know I can turn my hand to its practice and make, if not easy money, at least enough to keep the wolf from the door — haha.
Anyhow, tis Monday wherein I’m ready to take on another day of legal snakes and ladders.
Take care.
Julian