Good Grief!

It’s now been almost three months since I’ve had an engineering job. During that time, I’ve accomplished… not much of anything. At least not anything important. I’ve caught up on some DVDs and books I’ve been meaning to work through, cleaned my room, and beat a videogame or two, but I haven’t done anything that will ever be written of in the history books.

Oh, and I’ve also applied for new jobs. At least, I’ve applied for the jobs that are out there, which isn’t many. Apparently, the recession is now over. It’d be nice is someone would tell the hiring managers at the engineering firms, because they’re all still acting like they’re on the verge of going out of business. During my period of unemployment, I’ve submitted applications to probably under 20 jobs. That’s not me being picky, that’s just what’s out there. If a company’s got a job posting, I’ve applied. About the only criteria I turn skip an opening based on is location. After my year abroad, I think that I would like to remain close to home, but even then, I’m not firm in that position; if there was a posting for a job I was interested in on the other side of the world, I’d be applying. There just aren’t any positions.

The types of positions that are available also hit me the other day. I realized that of all the jobs I’ve applied for, I don’t really want any of them. If I got offered any of these jobs, I’d take them, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not the type of job I’d go looking for unless I had to. I’m realistic, I’m not the guy who thinks he’s going to get the corner office with a year of experience, that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s not about the power or the prestige. It’s just about finding a job that’s related to something I’m even remotely interested in.

Maybe I should be using this time off to re-evaluate where I’m going with my life. Maybe I’m not supposed to be an engineer. I’ve always been more interested in the creative and entertainment side of things than I have in the math side, but how many people actually get to make a living being creative? It always just seemed more practical to do the engineering thing. And, besides, I was the smart one. Aren’t the smart ones supposed to go out and make something of themselves? Become doctors, or lawyers, or engineers? No one ever told me that that’s what I should do, but I guess that’s just the societal expectation that I absorbed.

Instead of going out and making something of myself, right now it feels like I’m going backwards. After spending the last year living on my own, all over North America, I’m now back living in my parents house. I went from being a full time engineer to working at my old job at the pool, as a lifeguard and swimming instructor. Even socially I’ve begun to backslide, heading towards my old loner ways. I’m not nearly back to my old 15 year old self, but I’ve definitely regressed from where I was a year ago.

As long as I’m doing some self-evaluation, I might as well offer this up for the beginners. Recently, I’ve been reading Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis. I’s a biography of Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip (Charlie Brown, Snoopy, et.al.). While reading I could not help but notice how uncomfortably closely I resemble Schulz. If you’re only passingly familiar with the man, you might think this is a good thing, after all, he was wildly successful and died a wealthy and beloved man. However, his personal life was a mess, and his personality up to his mid thirties seems to be nearly identical to my own. All of his insecurities, tics, and neuroses are my own. Seeing this issues in someone else and, worse, how they crippled him, made for a fascinating but deeply troubling read. The similarities were so extreme that I could, without any exaggeration, give a stranger the first 250 pages of this book and they would then know me better than many of my friends and family members.

So, what do I do with this new found self-awareness? Well, I’m not sure. Some would say that the mere fact that I can recognize my own problems in someone else’s life means that I should be able to takes steps to correct them in my own. Moreover, having seen their disastrous consequences, I should have the motivation to take corrective action before those consequences become my own. I’m not sure exactly what’ll do yet, but at least it will give me something to do while I try to find a new job.

I’m not the type of person who needs to always be doing something. I’m trying to look at this time off as the last extended vacation I’m likely to have for quite a while. After all, there won’t be any more summer vacations for me, school is done. The next time I’m likely to have more than a couple of weeks of at a time will be when I’m retired, so I’m trying to make the best of my current situation. The one thing I do wish, however, is that I could somehow know how long it would last. If I could just know that I’d get a job next week or in 6 months, either way, it doesn’t much matter, it’d just be nice to know. That way I could plan out not only my finances, but also what I want to do, what do I want to make sure I get done before I have to go back to work.

As it stands there are still three things that I’d very much like to get done before I go back to work, none of which I’ve even begun to do. The first aid film that we’ve been working on is nearing completion, but it’s been about 10 months since I’ve last worked on the edit. There’s probably only about 8-16 hours of work left to be done, so I need to wrap that up so I can at least say it’s finished and move on. I have an outline for a screenplay in my head, that’s been there for about 2 years, which I’d really like to bang out. Maybe it’ll help to satiate my creative bug for a while. I don’t expect it to go anywhere, but it’d be nice to see what I could come up with, how it’d turn out. I know November is “Write A Novel” month in the U.S., but a screenplay is sort of in the same spirit. Finally, in the pipe dream department, I’ve been toying with this idea of a movie theatre/entertainment complex that I’d love to own. I have no idea how much it would cost, only that I have nowhere near enough. I would like to get a little bit of work done there, however, just to see exactly how much of a pipe dream it really is, if there is any way I could ever conceivably make it a reality. It’s a great idea, but is the cost low enough that I could ever reel in some investors?

I guess that’s what I’ll work on over the next little while, all the while looking for a job. Oh, and if you have any leads on mechanical engineering jobs (or want to invest in a entertainment complex), let me know.

Sleep well,

DTE

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Songs of the moment:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll, Tegan & Sara – Hell, Vince Guaraldi – Cast Your Fate To The Wind

Music while I wrote:
Weezer - Raditude