recent events. crap. stuff and whatnot.

Well, recent events in my life have really forced me to examine my priorities in life and decide what the hell it is I'm doing with myself. For the most part, I'm a pretty content guy, but to be 100% honest my life isn't quite working out the way I thought it would when I was growing up and setting goals and deadlines for myself.

Brace yourselves here, kids. This is gonna be a ridiculous post.

The thing is, I set lofty goals for myself. Always have. For the most part, I also achieve them. When I was in high school, I wanted to be a comic book artist. As I've gotten older, I've realized a career isn't so important as personal life and family and friends. So at the end of high school, I set my sights on finishing school quickly, moving back home, and getting some sort of career I could be proud of, but focusing most of my life on my family and friends. I've gone through stages where I was more or less happy with the decisions I'd made, and stages where I was extremely happy with my career and friends and family, followed immediately by being hugely disatisfied with both areas of my life and exploring things that may get me closer to the dude I'm wanting to be.

I'm creative. I'm artistic. I'm funny. I'm a problem solver. I feel like I'm using none of those abilities at the moment, spending my weekends on home improvement projects or PHP coding a couple different websites I'm working on. Right now, it's not very fulfilling, although I'm hoping that changes soon.

I can't imagine having a boss for the rest of my life. A dress code. Someone telling me when I need to shave my face, or how to design a project, or when to show up to work. That's not me. Never has been. Hopefully never will be. But I've lived the past 2 years in my current position as a pseudo-creative type doing design work, but in such a controlled environment with such strict standards I have a hard time feeling at all accomplished, even when my projects get me lots of compliments from the guys upstairs.

But, my job has very little effect on who I am when I'm not at work. I'm here 37.5 hours per week. That's it. Then I'm rarely thinking about work and my job and what I do to pay the bills. I focus on my awesome group of friends, my awesome, adoring girlfriend. My dog. My house. My life. But when some of those "happy" things are taken out of the equation, it all comes crashing down around me. I start questioning myself. The town I'm living in. Am I really as creative and artistic as I credit myself as being? I mean, if I'm so 100% wrong and ass-backwards in one area of my life, then how can I assume I'm right about anything? I guess these are questions I need to answer.

I think my answer right now is to spend as much time as possible on creative side projects in an attempt to get rid of having a boss, in whatever way that pans out to be. The only way to not have a boss is to 1. do my own thing (which I tried before and it didn't work), or 2. become a boss at a company. I'm sure which one would be more fulfilling, but I've also tried that route and failed miserably. I need to try again, try harder, and be less afraid to sink money into projects that may or may not take off. I want to do a video podcast so bad I can taste it. But I have other projects to finish first.

Anyway, that's my rambling post for the day. In high school, I never thought my evenings would be consumed with trying to find a way to keep spammers away from my blog. I'm sad my life has come to this. But even worse is that I never thought my personal life would be consumed by the drama that I'm currently involved in. Aren't I better than this? Shouldn't I have picked better people to surround myself with? I guess I'll just have to keep trying. I can't just give up on myself and a better life, despite the sort of shit people insist on putting me through. Anyway, fingers are crossed that, if nothing else, I can be content with my life again. I thought I had that under control for a while, but I was wrong.