Friday, March 7, 2008

If you unfold a street map, you can never refold it in the same way again.


It’s been weeks since I’ve made an entry to the blog. Not because there haven’t been news stories that are pertinent to the subjects I discuss or for a lack of thoughts on the world around us. The reason is simply time management and outside interests.

Of all the things that keeps me going every day, dragging my beleaguered ass into the office to make more money for someone above me in the income food chain, isn't one of them. Having and maintaining a day job is what it is; a way to pay bills and advance down the professional road as far as I wish to take that road. Being paid wages for labor and services rendered is enough for most people and to those who do it and ask for nothing more, my hat is tipped to you.

What gets me up and keeps me going every day is the knowledge that once I am done with the 9 to 5 white collar job, I can go home and focus on the jobs that I do to make extra money. The work that I do for me, and my own benefit, are what keeps me going. Up until recently I looked at the home based business process as just a way to help pay bills and get me through the rough spots that modern life throws all of us. Now, I am in the middle of one of those life-changing phases that strike folks like me from time to time.

After I left the Navy in 1992 I began a cycle of working a wide range of jobs and trying different professions, not because I couldn’t maintain a single job, but because my mind is prone to jumping to new interests at an alarming rate. In the first 5 years after rejoining the civilian world I worked construction, been a full-time student, worked as a machinist and did testing in an R&D shop for a company in the alternative energy field. I’ve been in the IT industry since 1997 and have plied this trade in 4 different industries; hospitality, mechanical services, marketing research and credit card processing. I’m about to move in a new direction and this one is going to be strange and interesting.

There is a certain critical point where your perception of what you have been doing and what you perceive to be a potential new career, flips. Like an iceberg rotating itself to maintain it’s mass in relation to the earth’s gravity and it’s own buoyancy, this is the point where all things are heaved over. Even the most simple and mundane things such as driving down the road become filtered through a new set of eyes and you no longer see things the way you did before. Now I see opportunity where I once saw ‘nothing’ and the way I used to think in this area seems overly simplistic.

This is not to say that I am moving away from the blog. I will still comment on the events and news that connect to Conspiracy Theory and the High Weirdness subjects. I’m only saying that for the time being, maybe until late summer or early fall, my posts will be far less frequent. I hope you will still stay with this blog as I do foresee many things worthy of comment and I humbly appreciate the positive and kind words I’ve had from so many of you who have “stumbled” onto this blog in the last year. I will still post, I will still rant and rave, I will still call out politicians on their bullshit. I will still do what I have always done, just in smaller doses.

Change is never bad when it is welcomed and comes on your own terms. Some people spend their entire life changing but never seeming to make headway. Making headway in this old world is all about following the paths that you see fit to follow. One of the people I link to from this site and have mentioned before in previous postings is the artist Mack White.

Mack has recently retired from his job at the University of Texas and is pursuing his work full time. The university job, he has written about, paid for his support through the years so he could continue to create. Now he has retired from that position and his work, his own energy and his own direction is his focus. Mack should be very proud of the route he is taking. Any creative soul who stays on their path and does what it takes to maintain that outlet is one worthy of praise.

That is the kind of change I am talking about. Following the path that you create, the path you see illuminated and the path you know is true. While my new path isn’t going to follow a creative endeavor it is still one that I will be proud of when I get to the next turning point. God only knows where that next turning point will come from and what it will be.

So, for the time being hold on to your hats and don’t delete that bookmark for this blog. It isn’t curtains for me. I still have thoughts and weird subjects to mine. It’s time for me to adjust to the new surroundings, get my bearings and call back to you from the wilderness from time to time.