The Plan (Shaped By Cold Honesty)

I have found it hard to get in here as often as I used to, as often as I would like to.

At the end of the year of our lord 2012, I was down and dirty depressed, distressed, lost and wondering. I bounced around for a while as 2013 began, bobbing to the surface from time to time, sinking deep at other times, feeling life screaming past me and my brightly illuminated confusion.

It is amazing what hope can do and how it intertwines with perspective.

I know my life will improve, at least financially, on February 22, 2013. That is Day One of The New Job. This lifts me up. I take deeper breathes now instead of those made shallow by fear. But I am giving the situation a lot of thought.

We learn from our mistakes. That is a hopeful sentiment and one we use to fool ourselves more often than not. But I am sure it applies to a lot of people.

Except me. I have perfected the endless cycle of mistake repetition. Because my mind is truly warped, often crippled by psychological walls I can never break through.

I sit here two weeks out considering my weaknesses and plotting a strategy to defeat them. This in and of itself is an amazing evolution for me. In every other new job situation I immediately sabotaged myself because I knew I would hate the job before I ever set foot in the door. I did not prepare, I went in with a feeling of doom, walking through the doors on the first day like Jacob Marley walking through eternity with ten tons of chains wrapped around his ethereal body.

 Time after time after time after time I would come home from the new job and lie to my wife, lie to my sons. "How was your first day? Do you think you will like the job?" I told them yeah the people seem cool and the job will be good. I said this with my guts twisted into a knot, my heart and soul simultaneously suffocating and screaming in horror.

 That is not an exaggeration.

I have no illusions this time around. I work for an organization that is decadent and depraved. Knowing that makes it irrelevant. My only obligation is to make myself as happy as I can within this new reality.

These are the things that defeat me every time:

I have no self confidence. None. I struggle with the origin of this trait endlessly but I am not interested in analyzing it here. In every work situation around other people I always assume I am low man on the totem pole. The least intelligent, the least efficient, the least understood, contributing the least to the equation. I always assume everybody else knows more than me and functions more efficiently than me. 

I have managed people before and was not good at it because I am easy going. I don't believe you have to be a tyrant to manage people but I do believe you have to bring whatever strengths you possess to the responsibility. I never did this because I assumed I was not good at it anyway.

Knowledge. I never dug into any job because I was always fatalistic about it. Hated the job, figured I would go nowhere with it, was not interested in expending the energy to learn what I should have known. That approach makes you vulnerable.

Fear. I am always afraid to try something I think I cannot handle instead of just diving in and learning from the experience. Every job has aspects that you hate; I always avoided them instead of conquering them.

I recognize these short comings and I have a plan to neutralize them. At least as much as a diseased mind like mine can neutralize anything.

This is not a plan to become the best assistant liquor store manager in recorded history. This is a plan to make myself as happy as I can be within the parameters of a new reality.

Of course, this being 2013, I won't tell you what the plan is. I will only talk about accomplishments in here, not intentions.  I am proud of the fact that I have snagged this job, proud from the point of view of being able to go public with an accomplishment instead of whining about my current job or the interview carousel.

The money will contribute to my happiness. I am hammering out this plan to intensify the happiness. I will take a specific approach that makes sense to me considering my sordid employment past and recognizing my weaknesses. There is hope in this plan. Hope for personal evolution.

I might even set myself free.

But I am getting ahead of myself............