Accomplishments Which are not Within Me

On taking an inventory of the "success" or "failure" of "my life."  Why?  Because I have the time.  It is summer, so the sun rises early and falls late which makes for so much time.  My windows are open.  The heat has yet to rise and so the air is still fresh and it is time to consider "the job market."  And this endeavor has become inquiry because there is this time.  By the very act of "lack of success" (I've been looking for two months now), I am forced into evaluation.  While humbling, it's also thrilling.  I'm terrified of my own gratitude at my "failure."

There are possibilities I could focus upon if I chose, so do I choose?  What is a "successful" life?  What makes one a "failure"?  This being unemployed really fucks with how I see myself some days.  And yet, this existential gap is central to the whole experience I asked to embrace.

• I did not want a job right away.
• I did not know what I wanted to do.
• I knew I didn't want to replicate my gerbil wheel.
• I knew my life had gotten smaller in the past number of years.  Friends moved, divorced, died, fell away... so many.  I grieve their loss.

Maybe it is my accomplishments which brought me to that dead end.  I'd achieved what interested me.  I'd eaten strange foods, lost myself in cities where I couldn't read a symbol.  Most mountains of any interest to me, I have at least driven through, and I certainly have no interest in climbing. This has now become a search for what I've left undone, and what I need to do to earn a buck or two.

As a human ant, I'm driven to scramble around pushing the grain of sand back towards the growing mound surrounded by the other ants.

To Begin the Catalogue of My Failures:

• I will never paint a portrait in oils to the degree of accuracy, brush stroke, and color that I admire.

• I will never write a harrowing novel with the depth of some of my favorite authors have:

     C.J. Cherryh 

     David Weber 

     Orson Scott Card

     Louis Lamour

     Octavia Butler

     Marge Piercy

     Alice Hoffman 

     Lisa Marie Rice

     Kristen Ashley

     Remittance Girl

     Charlotte Stein

     Jane Austen (yes, I've read the entirety of her work)

     Charlotte Perkins Gilman

     Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley

     Margaret Atwood
     Bill Moyers
     Viktor Frankel
     Alice Walker
     Clarissa Pinkola Estes

   

• I will never finish a novel.

• I will never write a compelling character in a novel form.

• I've had to give up the following dreams:

         Jet fighter pilot - by age 11
         Dancer for NYC Ballet - by 16
         Lawyer - by 20
         Nun - 21
         CEO of a major corporation - by 25
         Painter - by 40
         Novelist ...

**************  What I have done **************

I have seen and walked in Angkor Wat.  This was an experience I didn't believe I'd ever be able to participate in while hearing about the wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

I fell in love with a very good person and he's been a witness to 3/5 of my life.  And the world has changed so that now it is right and meet to just love and be loved by another person irregardless of my sex, race, religion, or ethnic origin.  Amazing.

We remodeled a house and made it a home.

I hire and work very well with talented designers, artists, and craftspeople.

I've been healthy most of my life.

My love and I "dropped" everything one weekend and flew to Paris on a Sunday, stayed for a week, and came home.

Dave drove the Amalfi coast and I ended up begging him to pass the buses.


I ate pho in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Venice is the most beautiful city I've ever experienced, but the craftspeople and artists of Hanoi are the most technically impressive - and abundant.

I learned to scan a poem.

I've had poems accepted for publication at respectable venues.

I was asked and moderated on two very impressive poetry and writing boards.

I was a very good engineer.  Surprisingly good.  I was an awesome Operations tech.

There are very few people in the world who have had the opportunity to "grow" a job around their own interests.  My interests in core network performance and configuration gave me the opportunity to do the work I loved for year after year after year.  I got to examine the "innies" and the "outies", learn how to write queries against databases, participate in some very interesting technical discussions at a very high engineering level, drive change through an organization.  Wow.  Just wow.  There was shit which didn't exist and I made it.  I made it happen.  And then I walked away.