Splashdown

  Everyone belongs to a statistical club.

  Of course, the statistic is never the full measure of a person - I still consider most math and numbers part of the Axis of Evil - but if I were a statistician, I'd almost like to think a person's numbers is like a membership in one exclusive club or another.  Sorta like the Yacht Club. Or the Stonecutters.

  For instance, I'm part of the "Young Author" club, very exclusive, as only one in ten people will ever write a book in their lives, let alone two.  I'm part of the "Divorced by 30" club, a little more populous, as four in ten first marriages will end in divorce in Canada.  You can also throw me in for the Canadians of Trinidadian and Tobagonian ancestry, 50,000 people and counting, representing 0.15 of the Canadian population.  Of that, I'm one of only two authors in this group - Neil Bissoondath being the other - and may in fact be the next Ian Hanomansing if my acting and TV work progresses well. 

  And, within a few months, I'll be joining another growing club, one which includes 41% of the population aged 18 to 36 in its membership: the Boomerang Club. 

   Friends, Romans, Countrymen...I am moving home.

   (And yes, I'm aware I didn't provide accurate citation format for those numbers.  Citations are for Democrats.)
  
   This is a tough decision, but it's a necessary next step to accomplish some of my bigger life goals. 

   Normally, this is the point that I spend a ton of time and wordspace justifying my decision.  Strangely, I could give a crap what people think about this today.  My one year lease is up at the end of February, and while I could leave it alone and go "month to month" on my apartment, there is a window of opportunity to walk away.  And walking away is what I'm going to do.

   I've been living away from home for a decade now.  I moved out to live on residence in 2000, moving back home for the summer of 2001 only to head back out to my apartment with my ex for our third year at McMaster.  I've been away from home ever since. And, of course, for the past year, I've been living completely on my own. 

   It was all time well spent, and with a few tiny exceptions, I have no regrets about my independent living.  At this point in my personal development, it's hard to go back and say it was for nothing.  It all served a purpose, and just like other parts of life that have fulfilled what they were meant to fulfill, it's time to let it go....

  Okay, I can see this won't get much further than flowery New Age affirmations without some more concrete explanations.  And there are two: I need more spending cash now on things other than renting a place where I spend most of my time sleeping; and freeing up my apartment enables me to not feel like I'm held hostage by my current day job.  Now to explain the explanations.

   The advantages are clear: more money means debts paid, savings boosted, vacations - the type of travel I spent all my twenties fantasizing about but never actually got to do - and more of the material "stuff" that I've gone too long without. 

   Moving home with the 'rents and my sisters isn't a permanent thing. Frankly, our egos are all too big and our lifestyles too different for that to be sustainable for too long. It will also involve some commuting to work for a while. The disadvantages are clear. But whether I go home for four months and return to a cheaper rent, or whether I stay there a year, I'm still going to have to take this first step regardless. This simply happens to be the time that the opportunity has presented itself.

   Then there's the matter of my work anxiety.

 I suppose this is mostly my fault.  After all, I've been trying to find my niche in the economy for the past five years, ever since I got my first full time job.  Each time, I found something to complain about, and in two such cases, it was enough for me to leave the position altogether.  However, just as the Boy Who Cried Wolf learned to his regret, I'm now being serious when I tell you that this position is starting to undermine my self-confidence.  I simply am not a "fit" where I am, and everyone senses it. It really is only a matter of time before my bosses turn their full attention to replacing me.  The wolf is gonna get me sooner or later. Serious this time.

  Moving home provides immunity against my fear of losing everything in the event that they go for the "sooner" option. It gives me flexibility and a sense of freedom that I'm not risking everything by speaking up and speaking out. It will remove the feeling that I must stay put in a job, give me the feeling of freedom to pursue other opportunities.  There's nothing worse than feeling trapped.

   Moving home also lets me interact with more people in my day-to-day who aren't work colleagues.  Much of the time, the only people I interact with are the ones who are busting my butt.  I get chewed up, spat out, and made to feel like an idiot all day, and then I go home to an empty apartment, stressed out with no one to talk to.  Hanging out with friends helps, but it's not enough.

   My family, for our differences, is my tribe, my community.  I can at least go home and interact with a group of people who I know love me unconditionally, who believe in me, who appreciate my abilities, and who have much the same living conditions I do: very clean, no big parties, no drugs or alcohol floating around, no debauchery.  Some guys can feel at home in a party house: I'm not one of them. 

   And yes, moving home gives me the freedom to quit, if it comes to it, and still have a place to sleep. Some of my former in-laws and friends somehow managed to take the two instances in my otherwise uninterrupted 14 year work history where I quit jobs that were making me unhappy and declared me "unable to hold a job".  As such, I've had an axe to grind in putting up with the crap in my current workplace.  But it's making me miserable and the concerns of former in-laws and former friends are pretty low down on my priority list.  Moving home opens up the possibility of a rest period while I pursue other opportunities.

  Of course, my apartment is lovely.  It's in a great neighbourhood that I love, with good, friendly neighbours, and I do love where I currently live.  Most importantly, it is mine.  But I get the sense that this place has served its purpose in the greater scheme of my own life.

   Had I decided to move home a year ago, when my marriage ended, I would have felt all the more the failure.  I had another axe to grind: I had to show to myself that I could survive completely on my own.  Now that axe is pretty sharp, and I don't need to worry about proving my ability to live independently to others, or myself.  I can go home knowing that I'm able to come back out here again when I choose to.

  Had I not moved here, I doubt my book would have been finished, or turned out the way that it did. Burlington is a nexus of prosperity and a high quality of living, and the downtown around Brant and Lakeshore provided me with prime inspiration for my protagonist's own life, even if it's not by name.  An artist needs a vibe of prosperity, and that's what I got while I was here.

 Had I not moved here, I never would have taken that walk through the vendors at Ribfest and gotten involved with Film/Comm Talent, starting this new journey.  Had I not moved here, I never would have dated that girl who lived around the corner, and had that kiss that really renewed my own feeling of worth as a good partner. 

  Make no mistake.  This place helped manifest the best case scenario in a transformative year.

  But now, I am here, and the things I want to accomplish require me to say goodbye to Burlington, with thanks.  This will be the first time I'm leaving a place that I'm still in love with, heart and soul.  As I said, one of the toughest decisions I've made in recent years, and those years have had their moments, that's for sure.

  Too often, we hold onto things that served us in the past when they're well beyond their expiration date.  That doesn't invalidate their previous benefits: just means you need to get a new carton of milk is all.  

  Ironically, by choosing to pack it in for a while and go home, I feel even more empowered than I thought I would be, because it's a clear choice that I am making for myself.  In so doing, I avoid joining other statistical clubs: the Society of Working Poor; the I've Never Seen Europe Support Group; not to mention the Ancient Mystic Society of Unhappy Office Workers. 

  This isn't a failure to launch.  This is a deliberate de-orbit, a time to come back to earth for a while for a refit, so that I can land among the stars the next time I head up there.  And reach them I will.

  Splashdown's in two months.  Time to get ready.

Second Tier Dreams

    There are simply too many artists sacrificing the present chasing future dreams.

    As I wrote earlier, many aspiring writers, actors, animators, singers, what-have-you are waiting tables, pouring coffee, pushing papers, or lugging boxes to make ends meet.  The justification is that they're just "paying the bills", and this is true.  But one thing they don't consider is that they're not necessarily making the best use of other talents they may have in the interim.

   Take someone like myself - university educated, leadership talents thanks to the Fraternity and other organizations, intelligent, with high technical skill - and put them doing something from 9 to 5 that makes little use of these other talents - like administration or other entry level posts - and what do you have?  Work dissatisfaction.  Personal stagnation.  Stress.  Anxiety.  Feelings of malaise and disappointment. 

   Why do we do this to ourselves?  "Why," we say, "I'm just doing this until [fill in the lucrative artsy career goal], nothing more."  Why do we do this?  "It's just what I've always done." And every word of it is true, but eventually, working below our potential on a daily basis will cost us those other talents. They will atrophy. 

   As such, it's important to envision a second-tier dream, while bigger ones are pending.

   Artists usually don't do this, especially if they, like me, use tools like the Law of Attraction and intention-based mindset practices to fulfill goals.  "If I go after something else, won't I be compromising my dream?  Won't I be spreading myself too thin if I get a job that's too involved?"

   The questions makes sense, and the answer to both is, well, yes and no.  Yes, because no longer is your vision of seeing your book on the bestseller's shelf at Borders or winning a Grammy going to be the only one you have.  No, because the second-tier dream runs parallel to the main one: in fact, the second tier dream underlies the first.

   You see, Aspiring Career Artist, you're going to have to work a job no matter what until you get to that moment of fulfillment.  That means you have an opportunity to not only pay the bills, but to develop other skills that you might be sidelining in favour of your chief talent.

   Cindy Crawford may be a world-famous model now, but she had won a scholarship to study Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University. Mind you, she only studied for one academic quarter before modeling took off, but the point is that she definitely had talents that she would have applied in the working world.

  Twin career pursuits can lead to cross-fertilization that can only enhance your bigger dreams.  For instance, if you become a team lead in some capacity at a company, you'll build leadership and organizational skills that you can then internalize enough to help keep you on track with your novel-writing.  Sales skills garnered anywhere from furniture stores to the financial sector can enhance your abilities to read people, which you can then translate to better character portrayals as an actor.

   If it's that simple, why don't more people have twin careers?  That's the thing: they do.  In my modest thirteen year work history, I've met several dozen individuals like this, each with their own "thing on the side".  And many, if not most of the people I've actually talked to about their bigger dreams, feel as though they're not normal, that they're deviating from what society says they "should" be doing. That's because we're conditioned as children, especially boys, to think about one career only. 

   "What do you want to be when you grow up?" isn't typically a multiple choice question, but it should be, because most human beings aren't one-trick ponies.

   We spend 40 hours a week at a full-time job.  A third of your day, at least half of your waking life (assuming we're splitting the 24 hours three ways, including sleep).  If it's making you feel miserable, if you feel like a misfit, that's a sure sign that you should be looking to trade up anyway, artsy career goal or not.

   But if you are an artist, take it from a guy who worked at three different places in the three years it took him to start and finish his first novel: don't suffer the present for your future needlessly.  Don't stagnate at a place just because "it's a job".

  You've got other talents, and if you can explore them at a day job that helps you grow in those directions, that will put you (back) in a mindset of confidence, leadership, ambition, and excellence, then that's where you should be looking. 

  That's what I'm looking for.  After finishing the exercise that my ex gave me the other day, I concluded that what I'm looking for boils down to a few key elements: a leadership role in a big private sector company; a large team environment where I interact with lots of people each day; a Monday to Friday day shift; at least 10k more a year in take-home money than what I'm making now; a fair, consistent, and people-centric management philosophy; and someplace that has a strong participatory corporate culture (i.e. company teams, events, parties).   That's broad enough that I'm sure I can find such a place in my area, but specific enough that I reduce the risk of repeating past mistakes in approaching a potential job.

  To my friends who are still in school, high school and up, do yourselves a favour: set yourself a secondary, as well as a primary dream.  Contrary to what your parents, educators, and physics may have taught you, you can be in two places at once. 

   And who knows?  You might discover that your second tier dream is actually the thing you really want to do for your working life.  Of course, today, that's not me.  Definitely not me....

Please Note

  At 7:48pm, EST, on Sunday, December 12th, 2010, I finished my novel.  I was in my apartment in Burlington, Ontario. 

  Convergence is 311 pages (8 1/2 by 11), and the first draft is 127,511 words as of the end of writing.

  I've finished my novel. 

  Huh....isn't that something?

What this Blog Is Really About

   Recent events in my personal life that peripherally involve my writings have inspired this entry.

   I've had online journals before, all of which I let lapse.  As I had finished my first book and approached the middle of my second manuscript back in late 2009, restarting a blog was definitely on my mind, but I procrastinated. 

  Then, this past January, my marriage ended in a very dramatic way, and suddenly I had a lot I wanted to share with people I knew, even people I didn't.

   Looking back over the archives, it's been a long journey.  I've covered far more mileage than most people in my situation would have.  I'm a very different person than when I started, a better one, if maybe more frenetic, at once more and less certain of himself and the new identity I am still crafting for myself. 

  And though I've hesitated at times, both off and online, I've ultimately had no qualms sharing it all with the entire wired world in this forum.

   But make no mistake: my openness about my doubts and weaknesses, moments of frustration, does not give you the right to treat me like a weakling.  In many ways, because I can open up, I'm stronger than the manliest alpha, because I've got the balls to walk with an open heart.

   So what is this blog?

Odd Place is My Web Presence. You'll notice the tabs I keep for my new talent work, my bio, my books, and my freelance work. This is the professional portion of my home page. Everything else is for fun.

Odd Place is My Story:  My life's far more interesting than it might seem at the outset. Off the top of my head, at least fifty or so good souls out there consider me a good soul, a close friend, and someone they care about.  My story thus matters to several people, and I don't mind sharing it. 

  (Hell, if I never wrote this blog, I never would have met Alice, and my BlackBerry would be tragically vacant)

Odd Place is My Therapist.  Yes, I've taken therapy in the past.  It's helped. 

  I hear rumours some of you consider it unmanly or gay to take psychological therapy, to openly talk about dreams, emotions, ideas, and the dreaded "f" word for most straight guys, "feelings".

  You know what, how's this for an "f" word? Fuck that! 

  Half the benefit of all therapy is simply knowing that another human being out there knows your insides, can clue in to what's happening to you. Writing here about major problems, frustrations, and anxieties helps me feel better.

  And if you guys think this misrepresents me to be more fucked up than I am, consider this: I have to be in a clear, calm, and content frame of mind to be able to write about anything, let alone a major personal problem. 

  By the time you read about something like my nervous breakdown or my frustrations with working and dating, or whatever, it means that the negativity is already out of my system.  It's gone, out of my mind, body, and spirit and onto the page, presented in such a way that it can benefit someone else experiencing something similar. 

  This is how I vent, and when you meet me in real life after I've posted something dramatic here, I'm more than okay.  I'm Tony the fucking Tiger.  I'm GREAAAT! 

Odd Place is My Canvas.  Finally, I'm an artist.  Always have been, always will be. There are days that I crave heading out to the bars with the boys or out to play baseball or hockey, and there are days where I'm content to lose myself in my own daydreams. Lately, the introvert days outnumber the extrovert ones.

  I've grown into a social animal, but in many ways, I am still the kid who'd vanish to a grassy hill in the spring, lay back, and spend his lunch hour staring at the clouds.  I've had many events happen in my life that could have potentially killed that kid, but he's still around, seeing sailboats where the rest of us see cumuli. 

  Some people were born to throw a football around; others to run a city; maintain the law, or advance science and technology.  I was born to be a writer and an artist.  Whether the medium's electronic or acrylic, paper page or plasticine, I will use it to express myself. 

  This is a place where I can create whatever the hell it is I want to create, in a medium where I am proficient to the government-tested tune of 134 WPM.  A place where I can manifest as quickly as I can think.  People talk about "playing God"; how many of them put the emphasis on the "playing"?  Not many.

  So that's it.  If you're curious about the events in question, they're still ongoing, and if I do decide to comment, it'll be after they've passed.  Until then, have a pleasant evening!