Sunday, May 13, 2012

The Crossroads

I'm not inside my own mind today... and hell, who is?

Today is Mother's Day so I'll take a moment to say Happy Mother's Day to everyone who endured having a tiny fetus in their belly for 9-ish months (unless you're Lucille Bluth) and raised a child. Congratulations are in order, today is a day to celebrate you but like every other day contrived to smother a certain someone with gratitude, you should always be thankful for your parents. You've only got the parents you've got for better or worse. I'm happy with mine.

My mom was always there for me, she still is. She never tried to make me be something that I never wanted to be, and that's the thing I love the most about my mom. Mom respected my independence, and not only that, she helped it flourish. This, among other things, is why I love my mom. She did what she had to do, and she always treated me like I was an adult. It didn't matter if I was 15, or 25...

Happy Mother's Day.

How do you top that, am I right?

Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. A lot of soul-searching, and a lot of thinking (yeah, I already said that.)

Nova Scotia has been an experiment, this is to be true. Like every experiment I've undergone in life, the hypothesis was proven futile. This was okay, in the end, I've met a lot of great people here and I think I've learned a lot about people, about Canada, and about the world.

What's next?

I want to go to University... Yeah that's fucking weird isn't it?

I made a pact with myself to get my shit together at 25... well, that's now fast approaching. What do I want to do? Hell, I don't really know. I think I want to get into Psychology. I've always been curious about the Human Mind. It's something really interesting, and as weird as it sounds, I may not "like" people in the traditional sense but I do like to help people, and I like to listen to people. Understanding the mind and how it works would improve my ability to understand and to help people. It's not what I imagined myself doing 10 years ago when they start to hammer home the point that "you need to think about your future!" in High School but that's kind of how it always goes, isn't it?

We will see... there is so much in the air, and as much as I would like to get started in the fall semesters I am not sure that's a realistic possibility at this time. I can't allow myself to get caught up in self-doubt. This is the first time in my life I've actually felt motivated to go to school. I need to capitalize on this and go while I want to.

I'm sick of working shitty minimum-wage jobs, I'm sick of "the grind", and I am especially sick of being on the low end of the economic food chain, so to speak. That's one thing that's really stuck out here in Nova Scotia and that's helped my plight in regards to motivation. Living in Nova Scotia has helped motivate me to want to have a better life, because holy shit. So many people here are clawing and battling through day-to-day, trying to get to the next paycheck, that next grocery order, that next case of beer in some instances. It's a depressing place in that regard, and it's especially depressing to be caught up in the middle of it.

I'm mostly sick of busting my ass, and getting nothing out of it. At least the job I have now, I feel like I'm valued as an employee.

Let me digress momentarily.

I work at Swiss Chalet now, yeah, it's glamorous. It's not like Boston Pizza or White Spot, the restaurant jobs I had out west. Well it IS, but maybe being out of the kitchen for a couple years helped change my perspective.

The weirdest thing was being told "Good Job Bryce..."

Good Job?

To go from The Verge, where all you hear about is what you're doing wrong, what you're not doing, or what you could do better (the king of negative reinforcement, no wonder everyone there is miserable as shit.) to something like that.... I literally did not know how to take a compliment. To be told "Good Job." It's something I hadn't experienced in a long time. It's weird, not going to lie.

I've been there just over a month, and I still feel like I'm holding the kitchen back at times but I've only been there a month, so I'm still in the midst of the learning curve. I thought I would be more equipped to get "up to speed" in the kitchen because of my experience but I am used to working day shifts, so really, except for White Spot (which was YEARS ago now) I never really got to stand in the heart of the volcano, so to speak. It's been a big adjustment. I think if anything it's much less stressful than it could be because of my experience. The hours and pay aren't the greatest but hey, it's a job. At least I'm not unemployed.

So yes, I'm at a genuine crossroads of life. I'm engaged, about to be a married man in less than a year. I want to get on the path to building my career because as much as I like to daydream about being a Writer, it's hard when you're not writing. I also know there's not a large probability of success, or money. I always joked that I wanted to be a "Master of Journalism" ....

Well on this path I could become a Master of Psychology, and then some!

BOOYAH!