My lord.... was it really one and half years since I last wrote in here? Guess blogging was a fad for me back in 2006, but on my last day as a 30-something, I feel strangely reminded of Russtifarian, and want to express myself. Not that anyone reads my blog, but wtf it's really for me to review later in life and get a feel for the moment, eh?
"Eh"... I'm Canadian already!
Here's what I'm thinking ..........
- Sometimes these past few months I just feel like randomly crying. Sometimes because of Calypso, sometimes because of how stifling my job feels. Sometimes I give in to the depression, sometimes I control myself, like I did today. Was listening to Styx's "Don't Let It End" on my MP3 player and was suddenly awash in memories from 24 years ago, as a sophomore in Cardinal Spellman High School. Memories of my first girlfriend Michelle, of all the pain I felt as a teenager, of the passion I felt as a Peer Minister, of the intensity of almost everything I felt at the time. I miss the sharpness and novelty of life at the time, although no I wouldn't return to it voluntarily. Too much accompanying pain, soul searching, and parental breakup issues.
- I'd like to say that life is more balanced now than it was as a teen, but not for the past year! I think in 2006 I felt quite complete with my career, 2 kids, a proper house in London, secure in my life as an adult. That vanished in 2007. My job turned very very sour, with little satisfaction, long hours, and extended overseas business trips to allegedly exotic places but in reality I got to experience little of it. I left them. While my new job is far more satisfactory, it still leaves a gap, and raises far too often the question, "Is this really how I want to spend my life"?
- So what a bloody cliché, eh? Almost 40, and feeling that my career should have more personal meaning, that each day is precious, that I'm passing the half-point of my life and asking if this is all there is. Got it makes me want to cry just thinking about it. But I won't! (Mostly because I'm in a pub and that would be rather inappropriate.)
- But how liberating to be inappropriate!
Here's a list of how I think my life is changing, how I can escape/am escaping from the cocoon:
- Joining Sustrans as a Bicycle Ranger. Encouraging myself to exercise and cycle, yet within a community of like-minded people.
- Finally following through on our plans (dreams!) to move to Montreal.
- Reading books & magazines in French, at almost an adult level, and daily listening to French radio via my internet wi-fi radio.
- Re-learning kanji, with the goal to soon start reading manga in the native versions.
- And mostly, this desire to break from my current (dead end) career path for something which keeps the IT/gadget fun, but adds music and pleasure and excitement!
- Planning to get re-trained as a sound engineer, perhaps at a French-speaking school in Montreal.
- Purchasing a MIDI controller; learning to use Ableton Live.
- Asking for a Pro Tools Mbox 2 for my 40th, a real symbol of my desire to delve into life as a musician, a recording engineer, a dad who tinkers with sound, a guy who likes to sing & play & have fun.
- Why the fuck can't that be me? Why must I be limited by who I have been for the past 4 decades? Isn't that the main lesson from Tokyo, that I can turn my back on something and start again, with something far more appropriate for my stage in life? I'm not the 30-year-old I was in San Francisco, eager to be a web designer/Java programmer and live a life of code! That is all dying, all dying, and I'd be a fool to ignore the (at times desperate) desire for something more pleasurable and exhilarating to get me through my last 4 decades.
