Yesterday, I chose to stop using my old journal – yes, I’m one onf those people – while there wre still a bunch of pages left into it.
My excuse was that I wanted to “start a new chapter”. That symbolic and slightly wasteful gesture was inspired by events that happeend near the end of June.
First, I had to undergo surgery on a skin problem that I had been ignoring for too long. As you can imagine dealing with that lead to a lot of stress. I was fine with “not dealing with the problem” but now that I’d chosen to move forwards, I had to deal with the billions of questions that I had about the surgery, the events related to it and what sort of evil skin problem I would turn out to be dealing with.
Secondly, I was let go from my job after my previous employer decided to reorganize things. I wasn’t particularly upset, surprised or sat that it happeend but it did add to the stress pile that the surgery had created all the same.
The last two weeks, my body and mind strongly disagreed on how to deal with this stress. While my brain wanted to hang onto a “work routine” my body thought it was a great time to crash and burn because it didn’t want to fight off the common cold – because why bother?
Telling yourself you are starting a “new chapter” doesn’t hold any magical powers or change everything for the better. In fact, shortly after I made the “decision” yesterday morning I had one of the most trash off-days I had in a while.
Starting a new chapter also implies that you’ve got an idea of what you are going to write next. However, I have yet to figure out what I “want to do”. Not just in the next few weeks where I’m paid not to show up at work. No, I’m talking bigger picture stuff. While I swas still gainfully employed I had some vague sense of the direction I wanted to take my life in. However, it feels like getting fired took a wet spunge to the blackboard in my mind and wiped everything clear off – as if all my plans and ideas were somehow tied to my previouso employer.
I suppose that’s something that happens when you struggle to identify who you are outside of your work. At least “my job” was a part that was easy to define. Hello, I’m Steven and I’m doing X for money for Y. Fairly straight forward and you can build on that if people have other questions. I also allowed my job situation to throw a wrench in my personal projects situations so I’m starting from a blank slate over there as well. Not that I ever do any real work on any of them, hahaha. haha. Ha.
I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and do more drawing – which is challenging, because I now realize that most of my goals and motivations are also related to my job (or finding another job), and with the lack of inspiration from working I might struggle to get things done.
One thing I do want to achieve is the Security+ exam. Security is something I’m still strongly interested in and although I don’t see in what capacity I’ll integrate it into my career it’s definitely an area I’ll be trying to do more in.
I feel like this “new chapter” is a good opportunity to find out who I am “sans job” but I also know my autism will fight me in that department as I fail to define who I am as a person. This is old news. We’ll have to see how much of this “new chapter” talk rings hollow and whather I turn out to be a Steven 3.9 or more of a 3.8.1 with minor changes because I’m stuck in the my old ways.
Only time will tell. But hey, at least I get to start a new bullet journal and write this pseudo-intellectual semi-decade update, right?