find myself

Wow. It’s been over 4 years since the last entry.

What’s changed? A lot!

~ Well… for starters, I laugh when saying this: I’m more jaded. In a good way. :) Maybe I should call it more experienced in life in general.

~ I’m calmer – but still worry sometimes (kinda feels like it is inevitable since we’re human, after all.)

~ I’m finally actually happy – happier than I have ever been, but there is a lot of work ahead of me yet. :)

~ I’m a co-founder of a company – it’s not perfect, and not my biggest dream, but I really enjoy reaping the rewards of my hard work. The biggest perk is this: if I work hard, it is directly proportional to how well the company does, as well as how I fare. Amazing! Great! I’m not wasting time and my hard work is appreciated!

~ Because of this somewhat newer working arrangement, I’ve been able to meet a SLEW of new people, some of which are now close friends. They are amazing, they make me laugh and understand the amount of work that it takes to get a startup off the ground. We trade battle stories and have similar problems, schedules, lifestyles. Cheesy, a little, but they are great and I love being a part of their lives and vice versa.

~ It’s still a struggle – and maybe I am a little sore about past events… I still freelance my “old” skills here and there. I try not to fight that side of me – I now understand I actually like working with numbers and cleaning up messy books, but I can’t be fenced in with a 9-5. Besides, it seems like this new arrangement has SO MUCH LESS STRESS. Seriously. No more insane dress codes – I dress like a creative adult! Can you believe that one past employer asked that I not wear a certain sweater to the office (biz casual dress code)- it was a muted golden/tan wrap cover-up with a gorgeous weave that I would wear over my regular clothes since the air was on full blast during the summers/winters… I was shocked, as I thought it was a really nice sweater, not revealing, not bulky/crappy – still have no idea where their heads were about that.

Besides, there’s a bigger potential for success, too – if you enjoy your work environment, you are destined to perform better, no? Because of the freelance work, I’m exposed to different market sectors and actually learn more about my craft. Clients get a more well-rounded worker that’s not twiddling thumbs in their office trying to fill up a whole work day when everything’s already done. I can get a weeks worth of work completed in a few hours, which saves me time and the client money. What a win-win!

~ I still work on music and have met a few people here that do the same, even though their style is much different from mine. Feels like if I have trouble with equipment, they are right there to help out and walk me through – which is insanely cool. Maybe one of these days I’ll finally break out and release some stuff. Probably that will be the day when I can say this goal is complete! LOL

~ Life is good. It’s still an uphill battle, but at least it’s more fun now, more of a challenge. The people that I’ve surrounded myself with are genuine, nice, caring and just all around AWESOME! Kick the negative out of your life – it truly makes a huge difference. :)

I’m not there 100%, but feel much more COMFORTABLE with where I’m headed and how to get there – what my limits are, and definitely what I DON’T want to be doing. You could say I might actually be enjoying the ride… :)

As the recent events are still having me stumbling around, looking for something firm to grasp so I can steady myself, I’m realizing that I feel as if I’m in a fog. But it’s sort of like a life fog – you know when you’re living your life day-to-day and you never lift your head up to see the big picture? I want more out of life than just working at someone’s company (no matter how insanely nice and comfortable it may be). I want to discover the world and keep learning. Is it possible to outgrow a city as big as LA? What then? I’m sure I haven’t given it a chance, but I’m scared I’ll wake up one day and it has been 5, 10, even 20 years from now and I’m stuck in the same job, exact same apartment and nothing to show for my life…

I know I want to be more creative. Right now I push paper and numbers. I feel like I’m pretty good at it. Even though my employer is extremely nice, I feel like I’m not truly happy there. Perhaps the first step in this is to take a few art or design classes… maybe doodle around on the computer and see what I can come up with. (After all some of my other goals on here are graphic design related.) Not that that is definitely what I would love to do… maybe that’s the issue… I know what I want, but I’m not good enough, yet, but I need something real worldly to hold me over… but I would like a little more creativity than adding, subtracting, dividing, etc… it’s too b&w… and the air in there is really really dry. lol. I’ve noticed that. I’m constantly thirsty in this city. Kinda like my thirst for life!

SO, this may be quite heartfelt. But it’s to be expected when one is uprooted from a place they knew like the back of their hand, the people they knew, the expected schedules that they relied on, familiar foods and even the annoyances that now seem fairly comforting. My other half and I moved across the country – out west, where dreams come true. We knew it wouldn’t be easy. We were terrified. It was the most exciting time in our lives. We were happy. In fact, we had planned a three week trip to discover our own country in the process. It was amazing. Even though we were exhausted, this new way of life became normal to us, like the previous had only faintly existed before as if there was a 20 year gap between the two. As we ventured closer towards the west coast, fear started creeping in. What were we going to do now? Living out of motels and the car was almost all we knew. How were we going to find work? Would we be able to afford an apartment? What if we ended up in a bad area? Would we be forced to come back home, heads hung in defeat for all to see our failures?

Well, we’re living in an apartment which is pretty nice in a pretty safe area. One of us is free-lancing and slowly adding on projects and perhaps even a full-time graphics gig to their plate. The other is employed pushing paper and entering financial data, meanwhile looking for a job that would use more of their education. Which is funny, because recently they were told by an agency that they were not hired for a position which they were really interested in because of their education. The company was afraid that they would leave in a year… not too glamorous for both individuals, but food is being bought and their is a roof over our heads.

Reality is here. The vast stretches of the Grand Canyon, forests that blend into the horizon with giant mountains underneath them, wide open skies and windy foreign lands, deserts with awkward brittle cliffs as if the land just sunk below thousands of feet in just a few seconds thus breaking away from them. New faces, new smells, new feelings as we grappled with our bodies in higher elevations – the thought of little responsibility. The humility that we really are only tiny specs on the map of time. Discoveries of new creatures and small towns left behind by time. Friendly faces which fed us and offered help and new insights. The bonding between two people as they are out in the middle of nowhere – the discovery of each other even though they have been together for many years already…

And here we are… almost back to what we initially wanted to escape from. Back to cubicles, schedules, unnatural stress, bills, traffic, bosses… really a sense of repulsion towards anything human.

I was told before we left, that the next few months are a fork in the road of the journey of our lives… people make serious LIFE CHANGES when they do what we did. And here we are, wondering what our next move is, as if we were playing a game of chess with God and he has made his move and hit his time clock.

Our move and our time is ticking…

Sitting here. I know I exist, but I haven’t ever had a chance to slow down and think about myself, who I am and what it is that I really want to accomplish with my life. I mean, I have a lot of ideas, but if I were to try to accomplish them all, well… I would be spread pretty thin, to say the least. But I don’t want to give up on the things I like to do… So right now I’m this young thing who knows about the dark depths of life (I’ve had more than my fair share of tragedies for my age) as well as the highest peaks of happiness. What I want out of life, ultimately, is to be happy. To be loved. I mean, I am loved, but I don’t want to ever doubt it and think that I’m not. I know that perhaps there’s something called destiny, but I take it with a grain of salt… We are in fact the keepers of the key to the gates of our own hapiness.

So, here I am. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have a pretty good idea of how I want end up. But that’s the ending… I need to learn to enjoy the journey. Therein lies this goal: to find myself along the journey so that I can throw my head back and enjoy it before the curtain closes at the end. In fact, I hope that I can find this within the first act. So…