I put in ten hours at my day job today and have a gig bright and early tomorrow morning. I should be sleeping I can’t stop myself from musing over my decisions in life. I’m not a person who believes in regrets just outcomes. Some are good and some are bad, but I made them and dwelling on them doesn’t change anything. So it seems better to spend that time planning the moving forward. I’ve been planning for well over a year and feel like I’m not making the changes I need to at a rate I’m satisfied with.
I’m dangerously overweight. I have a job that I feel holds me back financially. Most importantly I don’t get the time with my wife or daughter that I’d like. It all boils down to time though. I need change but the excuse I always come up with is time. I feel as though I slave away endlessly but progress is slow. I tell my wife I don’t have time for the gym and I’m not lying. I fill that time up. But to what end? It all feels like busy work in the doing. I feel like I’m working endlessly but I’m missing some piece that allows me to turn that work into time or money. Meanwhile the problems just sit there.
Starting with my weight. I’m not even sure of a number anymore. Let’s just say that anytime I sing Brian Wilson by the Barenaked Ladies on stage and I get to the line about “having a dream” I wish I could remember how being that light felt. Go look up the lyrics if you need clarification. Driving around in a van from gas stations to convenience stores all day 5 days a week for the past seven years for my day job hasn’t helped. I’m pretty sure it’s been a net of 200 lbs. it’s weird though I just keep putting it out of my head to keep working.
Work, work, work. I have a dayjob I don’t dislike that makes up the bulk of my income. A job I don’t hate for bosses I like. That should be an ideal situation. Except it’s not. There are two steps between me and the owner. One of which is his sons and the other is my supervisor who has a job I have no desire to have. Honestly I don’t think he makes much more than me when it all nets out. He’s there too much and doesn’t get to turn it off on weekends and while he’s a step up that’s the ceiling. Have you ever tried to quit a job you like for some vague need for personal growth? I promise you stability is a bit of an opiate.
But work doesn’t stop after the day job. I have my musical performance business that I’ve finagled the schedule at the day job around. I make better money performing but it’s on me and the whims of fickle bar owners to keep that income rolling. It was a busy year performing this past year but right now 2020 doesn’t look as fruitful. But then again I feel as though it looked that way this time last year too and I had thousands of dollars in future performances pulled from me over a manager hiring his buddies at a big local chain. The year ended very lucratively in the music department however. So I’m probably just overthinking things.
If that’s not enough work for you, I’ve been trying to start an online business of some sort. I’ve been trying to follow Kevin Geary’s Tutelage over at Digital Ambition to do what Jason Stapleton always says about growing human capital but to little avail. My ideas always seem to niche and don’t pull much in the way of traction. Maybe it’s just that I’m not getting the best part of my brains there.
The moral is I work. Hard. I don’t have much of a social life other than my politics and podcasting peeps online. Yet I rarely see my family both here at home and in the extended universe as well. I’m tired of being too tired to help with homeschooling my daughter. I’m tired of getting fatter and ashamed to meet new people who have only ever known me from the computer. I’m embarrassed that my wife gets what’s probably the worst years of love making I’ve ever been able to give. I wasted a lot of good stuff on…not her. So what is there to do?
Last November I gave myself two years to quit my day job. Year one passed with little fanfare and I’m not truly sure I’m in a much better position than when I made that vow to myself. I keep working because it’s the one thing I can do. I can be reliable. I can be responsible. But that need for more wants me to be more than that. I run my mouth about it a lot. I spent some time making sure my boss knew it. Which brings me to the reason I’m starting this blog when I am.
A few months ago they hired a new technician at my day job. I thought it might take longer but by golly they did it and here I am staring at the holiday season getting what I wanted. An extra two days of time a week. I can’t remember the last time I had a part time job and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit scared about it. I am. I have a family to support, but that fear is overshadowed by all the ways I believe that time can be better spent on improving my life for us in the ways I feel it needs improved.
I didn’t completely remove the safety net but for me I definitely feel as though I’ve taken a bit of a swan-dive into the unknown in an effort to bet on myself. I don’t think I’m a suckers bet but only time will tell. I’m not sure who out there might care about some white guy trying to self improve and make his life and world a bit better but maybe it will help someone. Follow along if you like to see how I weather this uncertainty of my own design. Will quoting my day job in a year be an option I can choose? I suppose I’ll find out.