In case you're wonderin', or even care the slightest bit...that little dude over yonder scratchin' his noggin...yea that's how I feel right about now.I'm lookin' down at the pieces of my life that I've now completely (or almost completely) disassembled. Kinda like I took the puzzle of my life and busted it up on the floor. All the pieces for it are there, but where do I begin? And at 35, why in the crystal green HELL would I bother doing something like that at this stage of my journey?!
Choice. That's why.
I've long told my "people" that life at its very core is little more than choice and balance. Your life and the lives of those around you have to have balance, and each choice made affects that balance for the good or bad in some manner. In the very end, your life balances out...it's how to manage the balance through your life that means something. It's the choices you make in the meantime that amount to a 'life" worth living.
Someone asked me just the other day why I picked NOW as the time to smash to shit, the puzzle of my life that I had spent 35 years puttin' together. She asked me to explain to her why NOW was the moment of truth, and not say...10 years ago instead? As I told her, so now I tell anyone reading...it was a choice. And a conscious one to be sure. No, this ain't some midlife crisis. I made a choice. Circumstance and chance worked together and conspired for the last several years to build up to the last year of my life, at which time one decision led to another choice and another, which all culminated in this decision to break it all and start over.
Sure, it woulda been great if I had this choice to make 10 years ago, but in hindsight, I wasn't near as ready as I feel today. Not saying I'm in better shape per se than I was 10 years ago, but I'm profoundly more aware than I ever have been.
I explained to her further that I had reached a crossroads of sorts, and I had to choose where I wanted to head. Where I wanted to aim my life. That's when it occurred to me that I'd have to start over. Take the best of both paths, but walk neither of them. Instead, take down the sign so no one can follow, and carve my own path. Tough choice to make, and I'll be the first to admit that, and a risky venture so "late" in life, but really the best decision I coulda made all things considered. I had to stop being "one of them" and had to be "me" for a change. She understood.
See, I got tired of following everyone else's policies and directives. Yea I've said it previously, but I'll build on it here. For too long I have felt like I've been operating at less than my full potential, and to a guy like me, that's brutal to have to face every day in the mirror. To know that I'm punchin' my hours for someone else, all to make them look good...while I go day after day feelin' stifled and shackled to mundane and sometimes preposterous directives, as well as feelin' that I'm underutilized and severely underpaid for my talents and passion (thx 'Nerva for bringing that word to the forefront). With direct nods to Party X rendering me virtually unemployable anyways, I saw this as the best time for me to start taking control of a life and future that I had too long allowed someone else to dictate.
Well no fuckin' more. Uh uh. Nope.
Even at 35, I have the passion of a 20-something that's fresh to the world, eyes wide open and ready to take on all comers. I'll stop just shy of using the phrase "born again" or "reborn" in any context...but rather, I'll use the word "awakened". Like I've slumbered for most of my 35 years in blissful ignorance of what I'm truly capable of, and what I'm willing to accept as status quo. The last year of my life has opened my eyes to a great deal of things, not the least of which is the true capacity I have that has never been put to use. My capacity is near boundless in a pure sense of the word. I know I'm better than I've been before now, but only recently did I acknowledge it and embrace it fully. Had scores of people most of my adult life tellin' me "J, you're so much better than (here and this place)...what are you doing wastin' your time and talents here for?"
Artificial security is the best reason I could come up with when I asked myself that question earlier tonight. The feeling of knowing I had a "9-5" to get up to 5 days a week. The feeling of a steady job and a regular paycheque. The feeling that others "respected" me because I'm just like them, in the sense that "we all have to work, right?" Such an artificial security that was though. Those same "secure" feelings I validated my choices against, turned out to be the same feelings that inspired dread and self loathing each and every day. You know that feeling...you get up, do your morning/evening routine, get to work, punch a clock, do your time, then go home so you can go to bed and do it all over again the next day. Yea, that "secure" feeling also inspired gut wrenching barf filled emotions of wanting to toss myself out a window just to avoid the insanity I was puttin' myself through.
As hard as it was for me to admit to myself after a life so long filled with professing my "Alpha Male" ways...somewhere along the road of my life I had become a sheep. Just another member of the herd. Well how the FUCK did that happen?! It happened because I allowed it to happen. So busy worried about pleasing everyone else, and making sure I was "right" in their eyes, that I overlooked what it meant to be "right"...it meant I couldn't be ME, except for after hours. Hours I usually spent bitchin' and pissin' and moanin' about how shitty my life was, and my job was, and how I hated it all and what the fuck was I doin' this all for anyways? So I can be favored and looked at as "right" in someone's eyes? To be validated as "an adult" because I slaved away and "did what had to be done" because we all have to do it?
Um yea...fuck that noise.
I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing. I know that now more than I ever did. I got tired of wearing that second skin, so I kicked it off. Broke my puzzle. Gonna start this merry-go-round all over again, but this time, for me. I admire the tenacity of the near mindless bleating sheep out there, because without them the world might seriously stop turnin'...but those sheep, and their Shepherds are gonna have to make due without me in the mix from here moving forward. My last Shepherd was seen by me in January of 2008. As far as I'm concerned, that will be the last Shepherd I'll ever need to see. I almost ended up in someone else's flock earlier this month, but lookin' at it all, I see that it was for the best that I couldn't get into the corral.
In just 2 days, I begin the next stage of my life, and start to rebuild my life puzzle. In just 2 days time, I open more doors for myself than I ever thought possible, or dared to dream. I embark on the greatest risk I have ever taken for myself, but one that I know needed to be taken now, and not later on. I'm gonna go into an arena I've long wanted to enter, but was too chicken shit to step foot in (and all for the sake of this artificial security I mentioned). I'm gonna endow myself with knowledge and tactics, and strategies. I'm gonna spread my wings and show myself that I can truly fly. I'm gonna stop being the sheep I made myself out to be, and start being the wolf I always have been.
Ben H over at Party X said it best to me the day I got to meet him for the first time, when I was being interviewed for a position...paraphrasing, he said to me "J, you have an impressive mind and skill set...and we could always use someone like that in a top tier position...but you have too much of a 'lone wolf' mentality to be a good fit at this time for that role we had you in mind for initially."
Little did I know then that Ben nailed it - I was not ever gonna be a good little sheep. Little did I know that 4 years later, those words would echo in my head in such a way as to cause and reaffirm my awakening. He knew it and saw it all those years ago, and I just caught on. Well Ben, one of the few people I respected ultimately...I'm about to show you (and everyone) just how right you were all those years ago when I let that "lone wolf" off the chain shortly...to finally take control of my own life and do what's best for me, and no longer what's best for "them". I'm tired of making everyone else look good on my efforts...it's time for me to make myself look good for my own efforts.
This "lone wolf" is soon off the chain. 2 days and counting...
Hide the sheep.
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