You can't peel back the onion when you're holding a rotten apple

Received the study permit admission letter (the ticket to Canada) yesterday with our returned passports and promptly booked myself a too-early-morning solo trip back to T.O. on the 29th.  Jen and I will decide on a moving company pronto and I'll get the Canadian power-of-attorney drafted to bring along for a lease signing.  Gladly being a responsible adult, doing what needs to be done.


I found myself looking at the expiration dates on food products at home yesterday (and on those that we brought home during last night's downpour) and thinking about where we'll be, how different it'll be in some ways, the percentage of people I've known that I may never see again, but most of whom I haven't seen in ages anyway.  Not a bad thing, just evidence of my changed priorities.

Still thinking through why I got so emotional yesterday talking with Jen, who can't understand why people would do DIY basement shows with all of the risks involved and the potential for so much trouble.  The thing is, I agreed with her objections; I just know that those were the kinds of spaces where nine years ago I was able to develop, places that weren't always stuffed (like they were towards the end) of crusty punk kids and (in the worst houses) the billows of cigarette smoke and calling-card drinking.  The price I paid to be in those environments, the practical restrictions on playing legitimate venues in some cases... did I settle for it just to have a chance to play in a band with good friends?  There were so many great shows in so many places, but where do I fit musically at age 38 as an MBA student with no patience left for empty rhetoric in a small, self-deluding scene?  I have to believe that Toronto will have a cavalcade of more compatible playing options, but when it comes to "the scene" that I'm glad to be away from, it's almost better if people just kept their mouths shut in the first place, rather that take part in a physically dirty, conservative groupthink exercise where people just cultivate unhealthy anger to fit in.


("So how do you REALLY feel?")


And as if on cue, a carbon copy of my old Dodge van rolls through the parking lot as I think about getting together with old friends.


The last 18 months of work did take its toll on my perspective and my creative side, but was it the office environment, or the nature of the work itself?  I look back on my work lives and see that so much of what I did - pretty much everything since 1999 - was just repetitive, no different in the main from stereotypical factory work, the tasks following an explicitly designed framework, where occasional chances to flex and refine critical thinking skills were always bucking up against the explicitly designed framework (due to industry constraints imposed upon my employers).  I knew how good I had it in a work-control sense with PDW, but had no idea how hard it would be to enable and foster that same independent spirit at a real living wage.  Over ten years!  And only now does there seem to be a convergence of views I hold towards segments of society that have evolved, essentially, to where I've needed them to evolve.


In the past, it seems like I always had to have an answer, always had to justify my actions.  That's probably the connecting thread with why I got so bent with Jen yesterday: so many of my life decisions have been second-guessed when they didn't lead to the promised land of traditional financial rewards train that I wasn't often trying to catch, as I insistently wanted to flex my creative side on my own terms and willingly paid the price for that.  It's been great to align things to this point, though I'll soon be six-figures deep in red ink, as I've been able to fight off the contaminants of toxic opinions.

Truly, it's a blessing to be able to explain rather than be forced to justify.