Because social media never let's you forget, today was the four-year anniversary of a day that set up every day since. I had been working a new job for barely two months when I felt like my integrity and happiness was circling the drain. It was a bad scene, where I was being asked to lie to customers, and felt lied to about the true potential for the job. Throw in another miserable Midwest winter, and I was pretty much at my limit. It felt like 2009, only with more options.
I bailed on that job, started banking money from a boring but high-income contract gig, and we made plans. They started vague: Move somewhere with better weather, eventually get a job doing what I wanted (emphasize "eventually"). In four months, that led us to Central Florida and a one-year contract at a theme park company. Our story since that time, at least professionally and meteorologically, has been extraordinary.
You know how people say that sometimes you need to be in a really dark place to really understand what it means to be happy? I equate that to the bullshit suggestion that everything happens for a reason and want to punch those people in the balls. OK, not really, I don't want to hit anyone. But I would adapt the theory to say that sometimes you need to be pushed to certain limits before you're ready to make a change. That February, in 2013, I think I was reaching that limit. The icky feelings were powerful motivators.
I don't know why we as humans tend to wallow in a bad situation as long as we do. We stay in toxic relationships, jobs that suck our souls, or whatever, as if we're building character or will be awarded some badge of courage for taking a little abuse. I'm not saying that we shouldn't expect a little of it from time to time, because that is life, but when it forms into a long-term pattern, we've gotta make changes. For me, life has proven this routinely on 4-year-cycles since I entered adulthood.
Until this year.
Now it seems that I've realized that the opportunity to make smaller, more frequent adjustments, is a better way to operate. Maybe this is just growing up (it sure took long enough!), or maybe I've cracked the code for myself. It could be me applying my software development lifecycle skills to life, because I've worked in environments where we make lots of frequent, smaller changes for more than a decade. Whatever it is, I don't foresee any dramatic changes coming this year.
But if you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change. (Ugh, yeah, I went there.)
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