I’m not sure what this post will be. It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down to write a blog. I feel in a calm place right now, a lull, and so I figured I would dip my toes back into this blogging thing and give those who are interested an update on my life.
Professionally
I’m been at my current company for 2.5 years. I’m not sure why I started out talking about my job, because it’s also the area of my life I’m mostly likely to sound really mopey and victimized about. This, despite having had two conversations with people in the last month who have looked with envy on my job and asked me how to pivot into my field.
My current thoughts about my job can be summarized as: it’s difficult working in the corporate environment. You’re liable to run into people of various qualifications and moral standards, including those lacking in both. If encountering these kinds of people unsettles you, makes it so you can’t enjoy your days, stay away from corporate.
I’m likely to blog more about this in the future. Corporate life is new to me, and I’ve been chewing on the best way to approach it. I really appreciate my 2-3 friends who have expertise in this area, and who have discussed it with me, because I’m flying blind. (Ie, no one in my family has experience with it. I have 1 extended family member who has a corporate job, but we talk once every 2 years or so. We talk biyearly.)
As a human body
I moved apartments in October, and it’s taken a few months to catch up with the busyness of that. It has been an incredibly needed thing. I despised my last apartment; I spent Covid lockdowns trapped inside it, and there wasn’t even a balcony. My current place is on the ground floor, has a patio, and has trees and a garden just outside my window. It’s gorgeous. It feels like an English cottage, and I’m decorating it similarly.
I’ve also lost 45 pounds, and I’ve spent about 1 year hovering there. I’m making more aggressive plans this year to break 50 and get beyond that. I’ve been doing “mindful eating,” which is tedious, but the point is you make brain changes; you only change things you want to change, after working through your desires and fears and so forth. This way, the progress you’ve made should stick around even through rough times — so they say.
Social life
I am dating and seeing good success there. Last year, I was hung up on creating a dating profile, but with the help of my wonderful friends, we were able to get some pictures I don’t hate and get that going. It’s only January, and I’m already on a third date with someone tomorrow. Dating is much easier than I thought it would be. It turns out, it’s really about being chill and having fun, and if it’s not that, I can find the next person where it is.
Last July, I accepted a position as moderator of a sizable online community I’d been involved with for 3 years. Moderating was a lot of fun, but I stepped down from the position in early December because it didn’t feel like a good fit for me. That sucked. I’ve been grieving it — honestly, it reminds me of what happens when you leave a church, which is something I’ve observed and experienced a few times in my childhood. The grieving has had its ups and downs, but I’m pleased that the sun has been peaking out from behind the clouds more often lately.
Life is short. Since we have a limited amount of time, it’s good to spend time on things that are actually furthering your life goals, giving you positive mojo, and so forth.
Entertainment
I’ve been trying to work on this. TV was a huge source of entertainment to me, and so was movies. But both have sucked in the last 5 years. So many things are becoming preachy, but honestly, the larger problem is that the writing is just not good these days. I’m not sure how this could be possible except to speculate that studios don’t value that, don’t know how to spot it, or aren’t rewarding it. You watch things from the 40s or 60s or 90s and the writing is often so crisp. Now, our best movies are 50% or 40% as good as those.
Remember that year when everyone was in love with that cowboy movie? What year, what movie was that? (Looking it up.) Ah, The Power of the Dog, 2021. People were going on about that movie, and guys, it was just OKAY. It was kind of sloppy, kind of mishandled in places. It needed a few more rewrites.
But, if you go back and watch HUD (1963, Paul Newman) — which is a movie I watched and rewatched in the last 2 years — it SINGS. A movie I’d never heard of before 2021. The dialogue is fire, the cinematography, the characterization, the story, the opening scene, the ending scene, all of it, exactly appropriate. It’s a film.
So basically, you’re better off finding movies you’ve never heard of, from past decades, and trying those out… than you are watching anything being released now.
And TV is similar.
I started watching Frasier.
Writing
I’m getting better at writing. I tried my hand at 3-4 short stories in the last 2 years, and they aren’t awful. I understand certain techniques much better. Right now, I’m a little burned out on a longer short story, and I’ve stalled out on the act of writing altogether. But I have a lead on what to work on next: my perfectionism. I need to give it up. I’m planning on journaling about that as soon as I’m done with this post.
Though, of course, it won’t be solved in a day…
Vacations
Last year, I went to Disneyland, Istanbul, Morocco… where else? NYC. I saw Josh Groban in Sweeney Todd and perused the MET Museum. This year, I’m going to lay low. I may do a local 10-day silent retreat in late April, and I’ve booked a writing retreat in November, during which I will see Chichen Itza. Yes, Mexico is laying low in my book.
By the way, the Morocco pictures are still incoming. I’ve been prioritizing my portfolio first.
Goals
This year, I want to focus on trying to be happy. Lately, I’ve been catching my mind going to worry — trying to find something to worry about, something that needs to be fixed. The reason my mind is doing this is so that, eventually, I will work myself into a place of contentment and happiness. So that one day I will look around and think, “Aha! That was the last thing that needed to be fixed! It’s all fixed now! Now I can be happy! Now I’ve earned it!”
However — and I don’t want to go too far into the theory of this — that’s not how it works. The striving never ends; the happiness never comes. You have to make it stop, on your own. And that’s my goal: to work on letting myself rest and enjoy my relative success with certain things. To want to be happy on par with how much I want to be growing. If it all works out, those will be in balance.