The Buzz Was Gone!

OK! FIRST OF ALL...

For those of you who've been commenting: I AM SO SORRY. I just NOW realized that I had comments on my blog. I usually get emails that tell me so, but for whatever reason have not gotten ANY emails saying that I have blog comments. This will be remedied. Thank you to those of you who've commented. I'm so sorry for not responding there. I feel like an asshole.

So you may have noticed that there hasn't been too much blog-age. I know. Horrible. It's all going to change, promise. There WILL be a love rant in the near future about how much I love Cheddar-Jack Cheezits. There WILL be so many love rants in the future about so many different, ridiculous things.

The summer has been a little nuts.
You remember that job I started a couple months ago?
The one I couldn't wear sneakers to?

...I quit.

I've never quit anything in my life, really. Well, unless you count basketball in 7th grade but that wasn't so much quitting as saying "Hey guys, instead of sitting on the bench here...I'm just gonna do it at home and watch Clarissa Explains it All. Cool?" And anyway, I ended up only bein' a quitter for like three days because then all the girls begged me to come back to the team and well, we all know I'm a sucker for girls. See? I joined back for all the right reasons: to impress girls. And man, let me tell you my track record with women started early, because I impressed them by doing things like shooting at the wrong hoop and missing simple lay-ups again and again and again and again and generally making a mess out of my two minutes of playing time.
But the point is: yup. I've never quit anything in my life. I'm not a quitter. I'm a doer. I'm stubborn, I like to prove I can do/accomplish/complete things. I hate having to call "uncle." But I did on Friday. Taken at face value (walking away from a steady, decent, paycheck complete with heath benefits and a discount at Barnes and Noble) it might qualify as the craziest thing I've ever done in my life. To other people, I might seem totally ludicrous and off my rocker. To me, it was one of the best moves I ever made in my life.

I can't speak ill of the company or of the people who work there-they're all great. But...it just wasn't for me. I was a round peg tryin' to shove myself in the square hole of my cubicle every morning and it wasn't worth it to me. And since I'm young, and don't have a mortgage or a family to support....I cut my losses and walked away. I'm back to scraping by on part time work and do you know what?
I couldn't be more happy about it.
I taught art classes Saturday and had a conversation with a five-year-old about whether or not she believed dinosaurs could sing (she said "no" I said "yes" (duh) she finally acquiesced that if they did sing they probably did so in a dinosaur voice, I totally agreed saying that if a dino were to sing I wouldn't expect him to sound like Pavarotti). She also told me that she was named Amelia, after Amelia Earhart the famous, "airplane driver". She told me that nobody knew where Amelia was and that she believes she crash landed in a lake and died. I said I thought she was on the moon. Later, when we were talking about dinosaurs, five-year-old Amelia told me nobody knew what happened to the dinosaurs either. Five-year-old Amelia believed that the all wrestled each other too much and that's why they're not around anymore. But she is also open to other possibilities, as there would probably at least be two or three dinosaurs still around that didn't wrestle too much. I said I thought maybe the dinosaurs were with Amelia the famous airplane driver and five-year-old Amelia agreed. Then five-year-old Amelia told me that the place she wanted to go more than anywhere in the world was ancient China because that's where the first kite was invented. Awesome.
After work on Saturday I got to work at theatre and help the boys there move a giant set around and got to use a power drill and crow-bar. I got to put my flashlight and multi-tool on my belt and I got to joke with dudes who always crack me up. Disconnecting the vampire sockets on the lights led to jokes about vampires, which led to impressions of Bill Compton from True Blood. Again. Awesome.

So am I going to be able to pay off the those college loans anytime soon?
No.
Until I find another full time job that's a better fit will I be able to move out anytime in the foreseeable future?
Nope.
Will I be able to buy that new mac desktop I've had my eye on for the past year?
Eh, it'll be a while till the spare change in my change bucket equals a thousand dollars. Especially when I constantly pick out quarters to use in vending machines. Until then it's me and my four-year-old Miss. Watermelon kickin' ibook-pre-webcam style.

Despite all that I am a heck of a lot happier now than I've been for the past two months. If I've learned anything so far in life it's that I can't compromise myself or who I am. My greatest successes in life have come from being 100% true to who I am. And when I'm not in a place to be who I am, I can't be happy and I can't expect happy things to happen to me.

The best way I know how to explain why I quit is this. And this also might be the part that has me officially labeled as "crazy"...
As hard as it was to balance two part time jobs and go to school full time...
As hard as it was to then balance THREE part time jobs...
As hard as it was to work for low pay and constantly try and make things "work"...
And even though I had some really tough days, some really sad days, and some really bad days...
I always felt a little "buzz" inside me. Maybe it was all the coffee, but I think it was little hum of excitement that told me that not only would everything be ok, not only would I be ok...but that life I was working so hard for was on it's way. That I was doing things right and that eventually, I'd get to where I needed to be. And not only that, but in getting to where I needed to be, I was doing things that kept me and my brain happy in the meanwhile: teaching kids, doing backstage technical work, seeing shows, BLOGGING...
When I started working for the company a few months ago that buzz died. It just died. And I don't mean to sound so dramatic, but it did. And suddenly I wasn't me anymore. And that scared the life outta me. Because I'd always believed that with everything I can get, give, and have taken from me in this world, the one thing I could always hang on to and that would always see me through was my sense of self. And it was so scary to see that die.


And while I'm not proud of quitting because that is so not my style or how I operate, I am proud that I did what I needed to do.

Leap and the net will appear right?


Right?


Right.