Types of Paper

It's been a while, hasn't it? Truth be told, I've been thinking of starting a new blog with a slightly different format/focus. I've also been contributing to another blog and that experience has given me some ideas on this, so I thought that once I figured that out I would start the new one and post the link here. But it is taking much longer than I'd planned just to decide on it, and in the meantime I've stopped my chronicling altogether, which really isn't a good thing for me.

So why is it so hard to think of what to write? Well, on one hand I would really like to write something with a wider scope - something that chronicles my life in general and not just the career-y part of it. It would also be freer in style and not be anonymous. I know that at surface level this sounds like a terrible idea; against every blogging guideline on theme and focus, completely unoriginal and even more self-indulgent than this blog. But hear me out.

Firstly I do this for myself, so the self-indulgence is justified. Also, I think I have reached a point where I want to practise presenting different types of material in different ways. I am developing all these skills in photography, video-editing, design and in combining different forms of media and I really want to use them. I often find myself wanting to write about experiences or share creations that wouldn't fit here.

But on the other hand, my life is filled with more dropout-related experiences than ever before and, whilst I would love to write about them, there are various complexities that surround this - a need for some degree of anonymity from a reputational & personal safety perspective, the impact that my actions have on others, etc. I tie myself in knots just thinking about it. So the issue is not just the standard writer's block of facing the blank page, but of deciding on the type of paper to use in the first place.

A friend of mine once told me that the blog posts she doesn't publish are the most important ones she writes, and I have certainly had similar experiences. In the end, I suspect I'll find a need and a mechanism for private reflection & analysis that complements a public one. But, for now, until I make time to draw the lines that determine what goes where, I'll be here.

The First Mistake

In my first post I said that I'd document my mistakes. Well, it didn't take me very long to make one.

My first mistake came on the day I resigned, when I told my boss that I was willing to stay for up to three months, even though contractually I only had to give one month's notice. I made this decision out of fear. I was quitting my job in the middle of a recession, with a mountain of debt, plenty of financial obligations and no life plan. The thought of only having one more pay cheque was terrifying. Three more seemed a lot less scary.

Besides I didn't even expect them to take me up on the offer, but they did, and I stayed, and this is what happened...

Initially I felt pretty positive, as though I somehow had the best of both worlds. I knew that I was leaving, which was the important thing, and I had this safety net of 3 months' salary and a desk from which I could research my new career all day. I felt liberated and hopeful. The things I disliked about work ceased to bother me, because I knew I didn't have to put up with them for much longer. I embraced the things I liked about it, and tried to take advantage of the opportunity to further develop a few of my skills.

This feeling was short-lived. The work was piled on noticeably and immediately, as though my management were trying to squeeze every last bit of productivity and knowledge out of me. I even received training on risk calculations I hadn't yet encountered, and was made to submit work and give presentations on them, sometimes with very little notice. On one occasion I worked til 8pm on a Sunday trying to prepare for a presentation. This treatment seems to be in keeping with that department's policies regarding leavers, but I'm sure the 3 month notice period made it even more tempting for my management.

Still I was leaving, I was starting my new life, and I was at least excited about that. I wanted to talk to everyone about it, to share the excitement and feed off their ideas and encouragement. But I was asked not to tell anyone in my team that I was leaving until they figured out the headcount and HR stuff, initially expecting that this would take a week, and then another week, and another. I ended up keeping quiet for over a month - longer than my contractual notice period!

The only thing I hated more than the increased mind-numbingly dull workload was the pretence. It didn't take long for the last of my conscientiousness to die. I dreaded going to work, and every day that I did made me hate myself a little more for ever choosing to do it for longer than I had to, and choosing to do so for money.

With a month to go I'd already handed over all the things I ever liked about the job, and at this stage I couldn't even feign an interest or maintain an acceptable level of professionalism. I was acting in defiance, taking advantage of every company perk, and giving back as little as possible.

One thing I did right, and the only thing that stopped me becoming a sluggish lethargic mess of a human being, was to take all my frustration out on the treadmill.

So I survived, but what did I get out of it? 3 months of hell, being paid less than I would in the contracting world I'm now entering, finding myself unemployed in a slow job market shortly before my holiday, and concern that my lack of motivation & professionalism in the last month has done permanent damage to the relationships I actually cared about keeping.

And the one positive outcome? A lesson, a memory, now preserved by this post - that 3 months is too long to do something I've already decided isn't right for me. In fact 'longer than necessary' is too long, and in determining what is 'necessary', I must remember that there is a subtle but important difference between pragmatism and fear.

Twists and Turns

Pretty drained today, so I thought it would good time to post up this video link, which will do most of the work for me.

14 mins & 33 seconds of good old fashioned wisdom - not knowledge, not answers, not solutions, but wisdom about life.

Shortly after I resigned from my job, I felt as open about what I could do with my life as I did when I was twelve years old, maybe more so as the world has changed tremendously since then. There are more jobs, and more routes into them, and the world is more flexible. These days, if you have drive and a market, you could even create your own job.

We certainly live in wonderful times, but this isn't as great a predicament as it sounds. The choice is actually very overwhelming, and the freedom & opportunities we have bring with them a responsibility to make the right decisions, because now if we end up unhappy, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves...and wouldn't that be terrible?

I told a friend this, and he sent me this video.

Here's the problem with that attitude: freedom and opportunity don't make us any better at predicting the future. We simply can't know whether or not our decisions will be the right ones. As Steve says, "You can't connect the dots looking forward".

The story of the calligraphy course is the one that speaks to me the most. We make decisions without knowing their outcomes, and with some of them an outcome isn't revealed for a very long time. I sometimes find this quite difficult to deal with, especially when other people continually question my choices (often out of love or concern) and I don't yet have an answer for them.

Here's an example: I took a TEFL course a few years ago and gained a certification that I haven't used at all. It was just what I wanted to do at the time. I found it interesting and I have retained the knowledge & experience it gave me...everything from knowing where to look up grammatical rules to the day to day problems faced by my refugee students.

Maybe I will find a use for it. Time will tell. The point is, these little escapades are not necessarily a waste of our time and resources. They become part of who we are, and what we have to offer, and by undertaking them we develop something; maybe a skill, knowledge, or confidence - something that we can call on if a need arises. In this way, Steve's seemingly random calligraphy course probably changed the world.

We make decisions with the best tools we have at our disposal: instinct, reasoning, emotion. We celebrate the good ones, learn from the bad ones, and then there are the ones that are yet to reveal themselves as having any point at all - the detours of our lives.

But I don't think they are detours. They are the twists and turns in the road. The hardest decisions to make sense of. They might be surprising, confusing, or even exasperating, and we don't know where the hell they are taking us, but they are still a valid part of the journey.