Bright Sunshiny Day

I’ve been trying sort of hard to get a job the last few months, well since late November. I gave myself the holidays to look for that job half-assed since my mom had just only died last October. I was let go from my positon in February 2009 and spent most of last year helping to care for my mother, who was very weak but still very wise. Now she is gone. The past year of dealing with the stress and strain and the joys along with the pains of that experience is still raw, even now in January. But time doesn't wait for you to heal and it is time to move on.

I've sent out the resumes, some of them seemed promising but I haven’t even gotten an ask for an interview. I’d be discouraged but all of the attempts I’ve made were in my old field, Information Technology or “IT” as we in the biz like to call it. I hate IT. I despise IT. I despise keeping up with the technology or the programming languages. It changes monthly. It's boring, at least the stuff I was forced to focus on. You can’t hang onto it and grow with it. You work your ass off for a certification that is useless the next year. You have to chase after it and keep up with it and maybe that works if you enjoy that sort of thing. I just don't. Not anymore. Maybe the distaste is because I was working for a company who just wanted me to get rid of stuff and people so they could make more money for their stockholders. They said one thing and acted in another way. Maybe that isn’t how it is all over corporate America but I fear it is. I’ve just had enough of that kind of bullshit.

But we have to pay the bills. I’ve used up the savings and severance I had and cashed a fund I'd have preferred to not have cashed out on. I have some inheritance but not enough to live for more than half a year or so. I don’t want to dig into that but if a job doesn’t happen by somewhere in March, I’ll have to dig into that. Then what? My 401K? Then what? This panic looms in the shadows and creeps out at night or at odd times. It grabs you by the throat and makes your heart pound in your chest. The doom you must feel as you hear that sound of the waterfall as you sit helpless in your boat without a paddle. And what we face is a picnic compared to those who have struggled longer and harder and had less or no resources to work with. I've been lucky but I still have a mortgage and a family and even though I know we are lucky, not having an income is looming ever and ever larger.

So, I brushed up my IT resume last Thanksgiving and half heartedly started looking for work in an economy that doesn’t have much need for a well educated white man who was probably overpaid in his last job and now would like to make about the same. It doesn’t help that I’ve watched over legacy apps and spent most of my last three years trying to have my department do less and less. When I found new work for my people they discouraged it. I already wasn’t liking IT but the last three years working for my former employer made me truly truly hate Information Technology. It's not like anyone in this industry is eager to have me either and that feeling is mutual I'm afraid.

The fact is I don’t want another IT job. We ate out at Noodles the other day and I found myself envying the guy behind the counter. I'd like his job right now. His job looked good to me. He's probably trying to get hired by corporate america. He might not think he has a "good" job, but to me he does. He gets to chat with people and take their orders instead of slave over a computer in a corner office of the basement. He probably has a few nice tasks he hates doing but tasks that keep the day going. He has purpose. He has some element of freedom still, I imagine at least. He isn’t being constrained by budgets or demands from middle management. He isn’t reducing work for those around him and squeezing out their life blood. And I can’t get a job like that because I’m too qualified or too old or because they just don’t believe I’d like to work more simply and enjoy life more. So I’m hunting down another corporate type job as a "new career". But this light went off today and I think I’m done with that.

I want to do what feels impossible. I want to enjoy what I do for a living. I want to get up and enjoy the day ahead of me not just the day that starts after I get home from work. I’ve been doing that since they let me go, enjoying these moments and the freedom this year has allowed me. I’ve enjoyed life more since they let me go than I have in a long time. I’m generally optimistic and I’ve had a great life - don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed my life. But my life has not been about work for over a decade now. And my life will never again be about just work - my daughter's leukemia way back in 1997 taught me about not doing that - so I'm wiser there. But I want to enjoy whatever work I do now and I know lots of people who do that. Enjoy their work. I want to be one of those people.

I’ve worked to make money so I could enjoy life outside of work. To enjoy time with my wife and kids. Almost all the enjoyment I've had the past years has been outside of work and very little at work. Even though 2009 was a difficult year, it was a wakeup year for me, an awakening. My mom said I should go for my dreams of being a writer. With conviction. Without a doubt. Don't settle was her message. Do more than dream. I want to write for a living. I want to build on that from this day forward. I'm happy when I'm doing that. I think I could make a living at it if I keep working at it and keep plugging away. Just trying to do that has given me more joy the past year than my old job ever did.

So that is what I’m going to do. I’m not going to interview for companies I don’t want to work for or if I do settle on one of those jobs it won't be at the expense of my dreams. I feel like I could lose myself again if I do that and I don't want to do that. I'll compromise perhaps but I wont give up on my dreams. I guess I never should've stopped. The world just kept pressing in then as it does again now but I'm more alert to it now. I won't make that mistake again. My life depends upon not making that mistake again. And life is short, there is no time to not go for what you want out of life.

That might be the real lessons I learned. I feel like I'm awake and a tad afraid I'll go back to the mindless rat race and forget about 2009. I’m going to take the next three months and deal with a heavy duty dose of rejection and shaking heads. Until one of those heads nods up and down. Until one of those heads see I have something to express. Because I do. And I enjoy doing that and more and more people have been enjoying what I do and that is so rewarding. Like what I’m doing now writing this, just expressing myself. Expressing what so many other people like me are feeling as well. If I can't help with guidance, at least I can get out the message that those of us who feel like I do are not alone.

I am a writer not an IT person. I might have to take an IT job to pay the bills but never again as a career. I'll keep plugging at this writing thing. That is what I will pursue this day forward, unrelenting. I can see clearly now. I can. It’s going to be a bright sun shiny day. I don't think it is a coincidence that at the moment I wrote this, it was in fact a very bright sun shiny day outside. Nor that my wife innocently pushed a button on this funky sun faced looking thing we have that sings "I Can See Clearly Now" which inspired this rant.

I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me down
It's gonna be a bright bright bright bright sun shiny day
It's gonna be a bright bright bright bright sun shiny day

Oh yes I can make it now the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is that rainbow I've been praying for
It's gonna be a bright bright bright bright sun shiny day

Look all around there's nothing but blue skies
Look straight ahead there's nothing but blue skies

I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Here is that rainbow I've been praying for
It's gonna be a bright bright bright bright sun shiny day
It's gonna be a bright bright bright bright sun shiny day
Bri-ri-ri-ri-right
Bright bright bright bright sun shiny day
Oh yeah
It's gonna be a bright bright bright bright sun shiny day
It's gonna be a bright bright bright bright sun shiny day
It's gonna be a bright bright bright bright sun shiny day.