Those Who Come Closer

So the new coworkers started Monday. One of the two stayed on for more than a day. My supervisor is scrambling to find a fifth person. This throws off our team flavor, to be sure. The office climate is changing. We are mobilizing to get this project done by the first of August. After that… I don’t know if we’ll even have any work. I need to find something else. Something besides contract work, that’s for sure. Something more tailored to what I’m trained for, something that can actually give me useful experience. Something with a really cool hat.

I am investigating a few ideas for new jobs, but turning up little more than more discouragement and hopelessness. In an attempt to both utilize key locations in the KC Experience and maintain the remnants of the better aspects of being a grad student, I have taken to job-searching, brainstorming, and/or composing while at a coffee shop on the nights I don’t have karate. There are many coffee shops I like, so I have a constant change of scenery.

I’m trying to consistently spend my lunch breaks reading. I am pretty far along in the Dark Nest trilogy. Considering how many Star Wars books I have left to read, I’m getting kind of irritated by book recommendations from everyone. Like I’m somehow lazy for still not reading The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I’ll get to it after I read the nine-book Legacy of the Force series, which will be after I read the Dark Nest trilogy, followed by Outbound Flight, Darth Bane, and Allegiance. After. Not before. That’s my priority. Live with it. Get off my back.

I am striving to achieve a delicate balance of Budo and standard physical training. It’s usurping a lot of my time, though. I’m not the couch potato I sound like when I blog. I also need to make use of the pool, right outside my balcony, which just opened up.

I’m working more with a few yet unannounced composition projects. What I really need is a Pocket Lillios. But I’m also not the inept slacker I sound like when it comes to composing. I just need more time. And federal grant money.

So I’m doing stuff and keeping busy. I’ll reveal more details when I’m damn good and ready. As I once explained to my friend Scott Blanchard, “It’s all part of my plan to die young, broke, alone, and obscure.”

I suppose I’ve become more gung-ho about not wasting a moment because of a series of conversations with Amanda Plocher regarding responsibility, accountability, credibility, and persona. She inadvertently set me off on a guilt trip, which culminated in the realization of how and why what I’m doing isn’t doing it for me.

It reminds me of Unbreakable, when Sam Jackson offers a reason for the feeling: “Maybe it’s because you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing.”

I’ve tasted life in the real world. It tastes like flat Cherry Coke tainted with cheap deodorizing soap. Not good. I’m not getting any younger, either. Seize the day. Be like water.

And keep pedaling hard…