Been watching a TV series lately and it’s more like a soap opera for guys.  Guns, motorcycles, good looking women and MC club drama…get the point?  I picked it up last year before I left for the desert and I found it on an internet service with a monthly fee now that I am here.  I watched the episodes of the 2011 season and have been picking up the previous seasons. I have watched the end of the available series and I found myself wanting to see the entire story line and at first I thought about going back and re-watching the whole thing all over again.  This was in an effort to relive the time I spent at home with my lady watching it there.  This was where the revelation came to me.  I have been hanging onto the past for some time lately and desperately wanting to relive the past because I know how it plays out.  It’s been this way for me for a long time and I think it’s why I have had such a difficulty moving along when it’s time to do so.  It’s so easy to try to cause the past to repeat itself for the purpose of knowing what will happen.  The truth is that it really isn’t easy to cause it repeat itself but it’s easy to hang onto it.  This is not how to live life to it’s fullest.  In fact it’s the exact opposite.

When I first came to this job, my office was in a place that was noisy and poorly lit.  The lights were fluorescent with no diffuser.  We were forced to move to a new location with even worse lights akin to the old street lights I used to play under at night as a child.  I requested the lights be replaced with something less harsh so I could see my screens better.  This was met with the typical response of an agency that cares nothing for the people who serve it.  If it doesn’t affect them directly they were too foolish to see how it affects them indirectly.  Typical.

I have since been moved along with the rest of the crew I work with and the lighting where I am is far better than before but it still kinda sucks.  It’s like working under grow lights in a warehouse rather than  real office.  Ahh…to be back in a real office setting with decent lights, normal hours and access to lunch that doesn’t taste like crap.  I guess that’s in a past life for now.  Trying to alter my current working conditions is like shoveling sand against the tides of the ocean.  I can only adapt or get out.  The pay keeps me adapting for now but there will be a day where I finally have reached my goal and at that time I can re-evaluate my situation and decide if I want to continue.  The working conditions have improved slightly but the work has become more or less routine and rather humdrum.  We moved after I came back from a vacation and since then, I find myself walking past the old orange lit desk I sat in and it reminds me that things move along and going back is anything but progress.

I keep thinking about going back to my home when this is over and I can’t help thinking about what I will do for work when I return.  There’s always for work for people with my skills but the pay just seem to be less and less each year.  Only just now do I realize that much like the cost of technology keeps going down.  The paycheck of the worker also goes down…unless, just like the functionality of the technology increasing to keep the price up, the skill set of the technology worker must increase to maintain the current income rate or the location of the work must have requirements that are outside of the realm of pure skills.  For example, hard to get to places, uncomfortable places or special alternate backgrounds.

Once such problem for many people is that while the economy takes a dump and jobs continue to pay less and less, the banking industry must keep getting the money that was originally agreed to when the workers had more of it.  Now the pressure to keep paying has begun to crush many people.  This is the way of the downturn.  The only way is to be free of the obligations of the debt.  there are a few ways and each has its own repercussions. To not pay the bills off will certainly result in lesser job opportunities and the ones that are available will not pay as well as the ones requiring decent credit.  I am close to my goal of debt freedom and close to returning to start a new life.  Will I buy new stuff?  Not unless it’s an investment and not a liability…meaning if it can’t be sold for at least what I paid for it after I use it or more than I paid for it if I don’t use it…it’s not an investment.  I think I may sell some of my liabilities and use that cash for investments.

Many people I know are confused and think that things like cars are investments.  I can tell you from experience, they are not.  I hear some people say, “I’m gonna fix my car up and sell it for more money”.  This thinking is all too common with people who think the wrong things are investments.  I’ve been just as guilty of that thinking.  This isn’t progress.

So….back to progress.  It’s time to start thinking about investing in assets, dumping liabilities and realizing that while you can never go back, you can remember how you got where you are, be open to the changes that come as we simply live life.

Today is Thursday.  It’s Ramadan here in Kuwait.  I just got up a few hours ago.  The internet connection is crappy as usual.  The weather is nice and warm.  Not to hot but but clearly summer.  I am at the 6 month mark and I am ready to leave this place.  It’s one thing to get away from home for a while but it’s another thing to move away for such a long time as to start feeling like you don’t really have a home.  That feeling…..no “home”, it’s partially brought on here by being displaced from my real home but that feeling can be intensified by working for the very organization I followed to the job away from home.  It just depends on how connected I feel at work that can define part of what might be called “job satisfaction”.  It’s the same reason that soldiers have a certain esprit decor.  A sense of not being the “only one” but belonging to a cause.

People are the same on the inside no matter how much they are paid.  This experience I am going through goes to show that you can be paid well and still not be satisfied.  While it may be true that you can purchase a certain amount of entertainment, the fact still remains, happiness isn’t for sale.  True satisfaction doesn’t come directly from accumulating cash.  I know this because while I am able to save my pennies, I really cannot do as much with them for either myself or others when I am so far away from my real home.  I have had more joy from being able to help someone than I get by simply counting the pennies used to do the deed.  Some people will jump up and say well you can feel good by helping me.  It’s deeper than that.  Don’t get me wrong though I get the request when it happens.

I have had to learn to separate the job into it’s own unconnected facet of my life and not look to it to be part of where my joy comes from, at least in the case of this job.  There is a reason that certain jobs pay  more than others.  Some are because of the amount of study and skill required to perform the work.  Others are based on a level of convenience or lack thereof and some are based on a combination of both skill and inconvenience.  My current role is a little of the latter.

Having come to this realization, I should be able to complete my tour here and not drop everything and just walk away.  I have considered it many times but I keep hanging on to my goal.  That goal…freedom to enjoy the things in life that don’t come with a monthly bill and requirement to pay it off each week or month.  It’s the idea of being able to find other enjoyment in doing something that I don’t have to make a living at but could if I wanted to.  If I could change the field I work in to be less demanding and more able to be pursued at a pace I wanted instead of full speed all day every day, it might be a place where I could enjoy it again.  Currently, my position isn’t like that.  It’s go go go go all the time on the most boring of computer work and it borders on making me insane.  It’s directed by people who do not truly understand IT systems.  They approach it with no creativity and no room for making alterations to streamline and simplify how the overall system works. Instead it’s about following strict inflexible guidelines with a change management division that bends to nothing.  It’s about expansion and money.  It’s not as much about finding the awesome way to do something cool.

Large organizations like those that write the most popular operating systems in the world are flexible.  It is part of why they are world class organizations.  They give creative license to the employees and as a result, they create some of the most popular software in the world.  It is this freedom that has been crushed in many organizations and it makes for incredibly dull work.  It has become a drag to go to work for these stifling agencies and that dear readers is where I want to escape from.  I used to be in the creative world but have found myself trudging to the lockstep drone of inflexibility.  I will return to the creative side and it should make for better blogs in the near future.

I hope that if nothing else, the things found here will help you but if it doesn’t.   I will still serve as a place for me to look back at and remember where I have been and also where I am going.

My you find your happy place in the job market and may you never find yourself working a job that appears to have no end and no place for enjoyment.

– C.R.