Tumult & North Stars

Painting by Nick J. Williams through Willow & Stone UK

I like to start each new year in a peaceful place, with quiet plans for the next 365 days, with my dreams squared up in my head.  I usually don't write things down, but I make mental notes of all the things I want to achieve.  They don't have to be big things.  

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For 2008, I wanted to make some progress on the house: get the living and dining rooms painted, get our office organized, buy a new iMac and a new digital camera.  I wanted to organize a trip to Europe and take a few courses (Residential Interior Design and History of Furniture, to be exact).  I managed to accomplish most of my list this year, but a few things remain.  For example, the new smoke and CO detectors aren't yet installed, and the office curtains still sit atop the desk.  But house "to do's" are endless, aren't they?

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Going into 2009, however, feels totally different.  I have no idea what my future holds, so it makes planning difficult.  We got The Speech at the office on December 18th, when they told us the company is being restructured and that "layoffs will be deep and wide".  Since I'm in a corporate engineering group, I suspect I'll be affected - they've already said that some corporate groups will be dismantled.  The focus will be "cash generation" and not the academic pursuits like Research & Development and technology advancement we've been fooling with lately.  As one of my colleagues said "better people than us have been laid-off."  Which means "don't take it personally" and that we have no control over anything, and that it doesn't matter how hard you work or who your allies are.  There is never transparent logic in these things.

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I don't want to be laid off.  It would probably be the best thing for me, considering that my career with this company has felt stagnant for a while.  But finding another job in this economy will be downright unpleasant.  Who wants to be unemployed for 6 or 12 months or longer?  

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I've been struggling the last couple of years with my career path, but the reality is that I simply cannot think of any other vocation worth sacrificing it all for.  I would love to write or study interior design, but honestly, I don't think I can go back to living on $15,000 a year to start.  I was a poor student for far too long (and worked far too hard) to go back to living on IKEA furniture and eating dried beans and rice and taking the bloody bus everywhere.  

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Sorry if I sound like I don't have enough passion, but honestly, I know several decorators in Calgary whose pinnacle of success is working at Ethan Allen or designing ugly office buildings and dentist's offices.  Sadly, we cannot all be Michael S. Smith or that annoying Nate Berkus, even if Oprah says so.  Anyway, where would half of those stars be if they didn't have famous mothers or wealth or good looks?  A lot of us have talent, but many don't have the means to develop it.  And Calgary is probably not the town to launch my brilliant writing career either.  Plus, I don't have a golden retreiver or a Sawtelle dog to exploit.  But maybe I could start hacking away?

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So this year, all I can say is:  I want to find my North Star.  I want to try to figure out what to do with my life. Where to take my career or what to transform it into.  I want to find out what my essential self craves and perhaps, if it has any hope of bearing fruit, try to move in that direction.

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It means learning to have more fun, and paying very close attention to the things that resonate inside me and make me happiest.  Those things I will doggedly follow this year!