I have not had a job interview in 8 months and have not applied for anything significant in that time. I have thought about forgoing the world I know to travel the world I have yet to meet. That urge to wander grows stronger with each passing day and in the time that I have not I could have experienced so much more.
Why didn’t I go already? Simple I am a diabetic which is my constant shadow and the risks going along for someone who has looked death in the maw are real and as raw as as my heart is pained.
I have no commitments and I have the ability to choose and that is intoxicating in it of itself. The recession has made finding a job as fun as going to the dentist, I’ve had plenty of jobs but nothing ever stuck. Sometimes it was my fault, other times it was because of conditions outside my control, and lastly I figure lady luck just decided to pass me by.
So after years of feeling worthless and lost I know now is the time to stop bring the walking dead and wake up from my zombified stupor. I need to breath life into my disparate focuses and narrow them to one, maybe two if I am lucky.
I stopped looking for work because I stopped believing, not in myself but that people would see past my faults to see something more behind the glass. I will not give an inch or a quarter to those that seek a cog for their machine.
I’ve been afraid to take that big risk, to believe in my own skill or lack thereof because I have not found work. That itself is demoralising and ego deflating to the point of depression but I am not there yet.
I will admit that I have been more passive, my body count of failures is high, my mistakes are many but my hope remains the only light in my midst and I held it to my chest to warm me as the shadows shower misery to my feet.
I will take the razor and cut off all that think I am defined by my faults and mistakes which are varied and widespread. I shall take the little light to fan the flame of today and stop cloaking myself in my fails. That interest captured in the darkness has compounded itself into my being and I need to cut that of or I shall find myself sharing the Titanic’s watery grave and I refuse for that to be an option from this point on.
I will own my future and build it on my terms by killing several birds with a single stone. I believe that I have as much value to the right people as anyone else. I will focus on becoming a better writer of story and of journalism, of taking applying my marketing knowledge and helping those whose give me the semblance of a chance.
I will not work for money but on what will hit me hard, what will stretch me the most, and will make me strive for the horizon beyond my reach. I don’t have to work for money but I have to believe in yet mission and the goal.
Not going to look back and prognosticate about what could have been but work towards the future that I have only glimpsed in the depths of my most wistful dreams. I will focus on projects that I can contribute to and keep my freedom and flexibility until I find the mission that fans my fire.
That has to be the way, if I just work for stability I will not be the best of me. Maybe that is what all this failure was really about? It was going to pain and surviving, of learning that not that I can make it but I will make it and making that the hat I wear, the cloak I clasp in my hero own personal hero’s quest.
All that went before was just the prologue, just the events that create Te mosaic of who I am now as I start this next phase. In story you want to create that sense of urgency and mine comes from these sideways years where I wandered in the fog of a war that has placed the middle class in a battle for survival against nature itself.
I can’t win that battle so I will not play that game, I will make my own. I still have many new mistakes to make and more to learn than I can fathom but to be at this point and see the darkness fade, to see the possibility from the hope I sheltered still warm to the touch will be what guides me past the falls to reach for heaven’s gaze.
The challenge right now is hat to focus on and in this case it is the startup scene, and developing my writers voice. Now I just got to find a way to get paid, to believe I have worth beyond free. I will also develop a backup plan to provide flexibility and options that I control. I shall own the day, the days of waste are over and a new starting line has been drawn, let’s get to work.