Shewt Me Now

Well, I got my schedule for next week...

Monday: off
Tuesday: 5:00 a.m.
Wednesday: 8:00 a.m.
Thursday: 5:00 a.m.
Friday: 5:00 a.m.
Saturday: 5:30 a.m.
Sunday: off

Just thinking about it makes my personal stress level go up about four notches. I am so not a morning person.

I saw Once Upon a Time In China last night; didn't care for it particularly. Jet Li just doesn't thrill me, I suppose. I enjoyed Iron Monkey well enough, and liked many bits of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but I much prefer Jackie Chan -- or such classics of cinematography as Chinese Super Ninja!

Watching it did remind me of how much I miss my kung fu. I was just starting to get somewhere, studying Wing Chun under the tutelage of one of the other people at LifeMinders before the bubble burst. I had memorized First Form and was starting to learn Second Form -- still very much a beginner, but doing well.

I have selected a new school that I intend to go to -- when I have regular hours, and more importantly, when I have money to pay for the lessons. They don't teach Wing Chun there, but that's okay ... Wing Chun is a style designed for smaller, lighter frames than mine. (It was created by a little old nun.) This school I intend to go to teaches a broad style for the first few years, then narrows down into more specific styles as the student gains mastery. I imagine that I'll probably end up learning Tiger Style or something similar, to take advantage of my height and large frame. I studied some Tai Chi Chu'an in college, so I tend to use open-hand strikes and pushes by habit.

I loved my martial arts sessions. I could feel my body and mind improving with each lesson -- and I could also feel my personal confidence and ability to face challenges improve. I have a problem with competition and confrontation -- stemming from a fundamental hole in my self-image -- and one of the reasons I took up the study of martial arts was so that I would have to compete, and have to get in there and engage my foe. I think the martial arts was one of the things that lifted me out of the depths of my darkest period last year ... it was a concrete, indisputable positive to counter all the negatives that were being assigned to me by various people, as well as by my own self.

I still have the Wing Chun reference material ... I'll probably start practicing what little of that I know again. I sorta lost interest in it as the lessons stopped, because I wasn't learning anything new. But half a loaf is better than none[1], and self-directed practice is better than no practice at all.

Then, Suddenly, the Subject Changed!

I sent off about a dozen resumes yesterday ... but like the dozen I sent off before that, and the dozen I sent off before that, I don't expect to hear much back from them. I need to start networking more, somehow. I have got to get a better job, and soon ... too much of what I want to do with my life in the coming year (and years) depends on having my own, livable income.

I've also got to decide what direction I'm going to go, in terms of a day job. The sad truth is that I don't really care what I do for a day job, and that's more of a liability than an asset. Because if I don't care, I don't have passion, and if I don't have passion, I'm not going to excel. It's hard enough to apply the effort to learn things I'm interested in any more -- to learn something I'm not interested in is like pulling teeth.

Once upon a time, I wasn't like that. I wanted to KNOW! Anything and everything! I would love to once again have the passion for a job that I once had about graphics ... to be interested enough in java (for instance) to sit around and cook up excuses to write software, so I would force myself to learn the language. I taught myself how to use WordPerfect, PageMaker, Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Illustrator ... all because I enjoyed graphics and layout as activities in and of themselves to sit there for hours and puzzle it out.

Now ... if it's not my cartoons or my writing ... I just don't care. And even those have a lot more "eh" days than they used to.

A lot of this is the long-term effects of the burnout I suffered at LifeMinders; some of it, I'm sure, is a result of Gneech's Big Depression of 2000 - 2001 and the stuff that caused/exacerbated that, and the lingering issues attached to it. Sometimes, "What's the point?" is all I feel about my day ... which sorta makes it hard to get excited about vocational training. :)

This is where discipline and/or faith come in, I suppose. I don't have a whole lot of either ... but I have a little of each. Maybe I can combine the two and get to a point where I'm excited about life again. That would be cool, and in fact, is well worth working towards.

So that's my career goal, as well as a new personal one: rebuild my ability to be enthusiastic ... so that I can get excited enough about a career to chase after it. :)

-The Gneech, performing tan sau, huen sau, wu sau, and fook sau in rapid succession

[1] Bonus points to whomever can spot the Jackie Chan reference. :)