It’s Been a While!
I sit here typing this in my office that has been acting as an auxiliary storage room for the past year. I felt silly having a whole computer in this room and not using it. So this is be using it.
As the title says, it’s been a while. Quite a while. I started this website with the intention of doing something with it, Then with the birth of our son and the loss of my father, it was sent off to the back burner of a stove in a different house in a different city in a different country. So far away that the most that I’ve done is work on my CV page and throw in some things in my photography page. Even my instagram took a minor hit. Of course, these are all just things that are to be expected with so many life changes at once.
Just popping this picture in here so that there’s something more to look at than just text. Also, look, that’s me!
I like to think that life is now slowly coming back to some kind of normal. Albeit in the absence of some. When I look back to the early days of 2020. I know, this is out of nowhere; it will make sense soon. But when I think of that time, I remember being freshly out of graduate school and looking to take a gap year just doing whatever I fancied. However, as we all know, some events altered the course of all of our lives. In a way, the past few years have felt like a weird extension of a gap year where I’ve just been wandering about wondering what on earth I should be doing. Of course, I famously just “wing it” with the knowledge that things always turn out in the end; and they have.
I feel content with the way life has progressed these past few years. There have been many ups and downs, but that’s just a part of our existence. I always find it funny how on the outside people seem to know what’s going on with life. I used to think that everyone has everything all set in place with a multi-step plan spanned over a few decades. In recent years, I’ve had some comment on how “put together” I am. How organised and successful I am. While that (to me at least) is quite far from the truth. I have no idea what I’m doing half of the time. I’m just good at "bullshitting” my way through things.
As one of my professors said to my cohort “your degrees just mean that you’re expert bullshitters” something that I’ve always found to be quite endearing and rather factual. We have an idea, we know what outcome we want (or are hoping for), and we seek out an answer. That’s how we’ve written our papers. The idea of “bullshitting” was always more apparent in our presentations. I still remember a presentation I had in my first year of university. I hadn’t prepared anything. I didn’t even read the chapter! I had to prepare this presentation in less than an hour. That’s when I had a brilliant idea: Why not have my peers do the work for me? So I walked in there, and asked everyone to share what stood out to them from the chapter. I agreed with them and subsequently expanded on their ideas. I continued on by asking related questions on the spot. I turned this presentation into a workshop. I got 87%.
All that said, I genuinely have no idea what’s going on. I have a calendar that’s full of meetings with friends, holidays, work, and other things. Despite that, I really don’t know what’s next. I suppose that makes things more interesting. But I promise everyone, I really don’t know what’s going on. I have a vague idea of what I want in life. What I want for my family. For my career. I know that I can’t fathom the idea of sacrificing 30-40 hours per week for an empty paycheque. Written that the mercy of someone who for some strange reason has the power to dictate whether I can go on holiday to visit family. No one gets between me and my family.
The nice thing about not knowing what’s next, or not knowing what exactly I wish to do: I know what I DON"‘T want from life. I made the mistake of putting work ahead of family when I was younger. I missed time with my grandmother when she lived closest. I would trade all of the money and experience earned from that to have had more time.
Moving forward to today, over the past few years I’ve managed quite well to maintain clear boundaries regarding my work time. three days per week, plus whatever work I happen to be doing with the university. That decision allowed me to spend lots of valuable time with my father until he passed. I have so many pictures and videos to show my son one day. In addition to this, I have so many memories (and photos/videos) with my wife and son in his first 18 months of life. I was able to be present during my wife’s pregnancy to help her (when she would let me). I’ve been able to help my mother along the grieving process with help from my wife and son.
Time that hasn’t been sacrificed to meaningless corporate greed has allowed me to invest in my family and rediscover my own interests and hobbies (as much as being a parent will allow). I still remember when I was offered a sales position at a used car dealership. I got the call while I was setting up a carseat. I told the owner what I was doing and we laughed and chatted about family. I asked him if part-time were possible. He said that it wasn’t; that that kind of sales would require full-time work. He sympathised and said that he had to make many sacrifice a lot of time with his family when he first started. I just don’t think I can make those same sacrifices.
Wow, I really write a lot when you put a keyboard in front of me. Well, that’s everything for now. I hope this is able to help someone out there. Just know, that you’re not alone in our search for meaning. And remember: We’re all bluffing; anyone who says that they’re not. They’re lying to you.
