Because Life Can Never Be Lived Too Close To The Edge

You know, after awhile you get used to all the 15 hour days and penny pinching and nail biting and hand wringing and self flagellation and knocking over piles of dishes and unopened mail and you think, "hey, man, I'm bored! All the adrenaline used to key me up and I'd run around like a hamster on crack, but now I'm just tired and disaffected." And you realize that you've stomped the steel-toed boot of your insane schedule upon the brused and battered countenance of your poor endocrine system for just a tad too long and that it just might not survive the next harried and squishy tromp you semi-awarely impart upon it between gulps of yet another BK Veggie sandwich while talking on your cellphone (hands-free of course...you know, for safety) and driving somewhere to which you're once again fifteen minutes late. And you realize that things are never going to get any easier than this, that you'll never really save up "enough" money, you'll never really be caught up on your work, and that there's always going to be some justifiable excuse ostensibly holding you at arms length from your dream because rarely does the universe roll out the red carpet and the trumpets and hand you your dreams on a silver platter. And really, what fun would life be if it did? And all at once you unleash a few metric tons of pent up momentum and go, "fuck it, it's not getting any easier, cheaper, or more cosmically right, so it might as well be now."

Then you take one last squinty-eyed look down the abyss and you jump.

Which is how I wound up quitting my job.

No, I don't have any money saved. No, I don't have enough massage clients yet to support me and my daughter. But I do have the talent, the drive, the marketing savvy and enough healthy fear of holding down another full-time office job to propel me to success. I hope. I did decide to get a part time gig to help pay some of the bills until I have a more robust schedule. It was a tough choice, but by far the lesser of two evils compared to staying where I am. I have managed to maintain a shred of innocent faith that I won't need it for long. Eek! Sigh.

Who will I be without all this stress? Assuming, that is, that I don't manage to manufacture some other stress to replace it with. What does it mean to live a relaxed life doing what you love? There are all these unconscious beliefs woven through the choices I've made, ones about it being called work for a reason and a bunch of other very stoic German ideas about toil and strife and stuff. When you decide to go against the grain of your familial conditioning it's nothing short of terrifying. Your conscience screams that it will never work. The scenarios of failure and humiliation grow ever more elaborate as you march closer to the point of no return.

But in perspective, when you sit down and get real and stop holding a big distorted microphone to the naysaying voice of conscience, the worst that could happen is not so bad. The bills get a little behind. I get another job if it comes to it. I make a longer term plan. Oh well. Does that mean I fail forever? Not really. Just that I go back to the drawing board and look for another route. I could live with that. In comparison, the thought of getting up to come to this wretched job for any longer than the next four days makes me want to run and jump off the nearest abyss.