Hiatus Status

I am, as previously stated, on hiatus from work, due simply to the fact that I've got a comfortable cushion of savings in the bank account and no desire to go to work at the moment. Rather than spending my time noodling with terribly interesting and smart people as I'd previously imagined I would, however, I've been mostly lumping around the apartment with the windows open (it's been beautifully spring-like here in Virginia), sneezing and coughing constantly because of my allergies.

I suppose that if you consider lying on the couch watching 3 seasons of Sons of Anarchy or repeatedly listening to side A of the old DJ R.A.W. Hellborn* mix tape or catching up on the last season of Dexter to be productive, then I've been a veritable Viking of efficacy, but otherwise, not so much.

I suppose that's not quite accurate. I've actually done stuff the past few weeks. Terribly productive stuff, in fact, like completing crossword puzzles (mostly) without cheating, writing, reading, and finishing a programming project I've been working on for the past 5 years. But mostly I feel as though I haven't done squat, I suppose because I haven't taken any gloriously long motorcycle trips or met any avant-garde intellectuals to drink a good chocolate stout with while we muse on the inner workings of the human mind or quantum physics. This is, of course, how I envisioned spending my hiatus - like one big renaissance of the mind and body that would inspire me to finish all of the writing and music projects I had ever started.

Of course, this whole concept was duly thwarted from day one by the fact that my seasonal allergies kicked in full force a week ago, and have subsequently led to me catching an insufferable cold, complete with a fever. This seems to happen every year. My body, quickly reacting to the THREAT of FLOWERS POLLENATING protects me by immediately and persistently creating the urge to sneeze, replete with the production of mounds of mucous and redness and itchiness from my eyes through to the bottom of my throat, all of which culminates after a week and gathers in my sinus cavity, which is apparently the catalyst for my immune system promptly giving in and succumbing to whatever biological weapons have been cast towards me from my neighbors the few times I ventured out to the grocery store.

It's incredibly hard to be productive when your body threatens to collapse from weakness every time you stand up.

So I've given up, at least for this week. Even as I am feeling better today, the storms are moving in, and will be hovering out there for the next few days, looking gloomily threatening and having the potential to create some more Southern hail, which would be disastrous were someone unfortunate enough to be out riding a motorcycle. Looks like I will be missing Bike Week in the Outer Banks this year.

Oh well, there's always next year.

Then again, this is what hiatus' are for, aren't they? They are for nothingness. Therefore I will embrace the Zen of my hiatus, and relish in the accomplishments I have made, rather than yearn for the productivity that my allergies and mental energy (or lack thereof) seem to be conspiring against me having at the moment.

And it is good.

Next week I will finish the next Great American Novel and publish a CD of original music, but this week I've got the rest of season 5 of Dexter to plow through.

And that couch isn't going to hold itself down.

*Interesting side note: Hellborn (currently playing as I write) runs at ALMOST the exact same B.P.M.  as my washing machine. Wonderful when they are synchronized, not so much when they fall off. 

Mental Floss

Part of my rehabilitation, during this hiatus from work, is to work on my memory. I'd like to strengthen my mental skills all around, in fact, but mostly I need to focus on recollection. I have sharp short term recall, but have been cursed with one of the worst long term memories of anyone I know. I'd almost prefer it was the other way around. While it's great to be able to distinctly remember everything that's happened or was said over the past several months, sadly there are huge parts of my personal life that I simply can't recall. So I have to rely on friends to retell stories as if I wasn't there.

Part of strengthening the mind is understanding how it works. While scientists on a whole are still in the early stages of identifying and mapping brain function and linking it to what we perceive as our mind, we actually have a unique opportunity, each of us, to explore how the mind works ourselves, having access to a fully operational one at all times as we do. The trick, of course, is to get past the concept that you are using a tool to analyze itself, which some say is why we will never be able to fully understand how our mind works. I wholeheartedly disagree with this - our mind is capable of visualizing such unimaginable things such as invisible protons or vast solar systems - so why not think that one day we will be able to use it to understand how we think?

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. My perception of the mind (based solely on the exercise of being aware of my own thoughts and where / how I become aware of them) is that it is made up of two distinctly separate pieces: the conscious and the subconscious. The subconscious mind operates exactly like the mind of an alligator or a dog or a cat; it is what allows us to function, to eat, to sleep, even to experience emotions. The conscious mind is a completely different animal, and seems to be capable of logical thought (based on pattern recognition and the ability to predict outcomes and make decisions accordingly).

This is pretty close to scientifically proven, and it doesn't contradict Dr. Freud - he was talking psychology and we're talking pure thought here. In fact, there are literally two different physical areas in the human brain that when measured for activity during different mental challenges each fire at different times. Scientifically, this seems to support the theory of dual conscious and subconscious minds by indicating that these distinct thought patterns take place in completely physically separate places in the brain.

Separate they may be, however these two pieces of our mental fiber are in constant communication with each other.They don't act as one, but they work together in near-perfect harmony.

Ever try your hardest to remember something only to fail and then have it pop up later when you are thinking about something completely different? That's your subconscious working in the background, executing a search, and then passing the results back to your conscious mind in the mental equivalent of a browser popup window. Ever have deja vu? That's your subconscious mind constantly comparing current sensory input with previously-recorded memories and sending an alert to your conscious when it finds a match that is worth noting.

I tend to think that we dream in our subconscious mind, and in a rested state with no sensory input, our conscious mind wanders over and watches from time to time, like some residential voyeur peeking over the fence at a suntanning neighbor's wife. This gives us a glimpse into the strange and jumbled world of our subconscious, a peek into how we actually think and process input.

Like dreams, this process is is illogical, intuitive, nonsensical, and completely meaningful.

It's also stubborn. While our conscious mind can be reasoned with, our subconscious cannot. It learns from repetition, and unlearns the same way. Have a cigarette with your coffee every morning for a year, and the first day you have a coffee and skip the cigarette, your subconscious (albeit fueled by chemical dependencies) will scream out for a smoke, desperately sending images of your favorite brand pack of smokes to its conscious cousin. Wake up every Monday dreading your work day for long enough, and even after you quit your job, Monday morning will arrive along with that same feeling of dread - now out of place and illogical, when viewed in the perspective of the rational conscious mind.

This is how I started my day today. Saturday and Sunday I rose full of hope and rested (despite not sleeping well), but this morning I woke up with the same nagging feelings of dread I used to get knowing that checking my e-mail would open a Pandora's box of misery to kick off my work week.

This is interesting insight, to say the least, into how complicated - and yet simplistic - the subconscious mind is. It tracked the day of the week in order to prepare me for my Monday, but couldn't track current events enough to know that work was no longer a factor.

Or, more to the point, it couldn't reason and predict that quitting my job meant that Mondays would no longer be depressing to me.

That's a task for the conscious.

And so the conscious and subconscious work together quite well, but then again are completely independent creatures and that's where we fall short of our true potential. The duality of man, so to speak, in that we literally have two minds operating for us (and against us) at any given time. How frustrating that I can be conscious of the difference of this Monday and last Monday, but still be a slave to my subconscious defenses that kicked in despite being no longer relevant.

Just like deciding to quit smoking isn't the same as quitting smoking.
(For those keeping track, by the way, it's day 4 and I'm not looking back. My subconscious mind can eat it.)

It seems to me that the key to life then, the key to enlightenment, and perhaps even the key to happiness is to tune our independent minds to work as one. Imagine how powerful a man would be if he could harness the strength of both halves of his mental capacity; the whole undoubtedly being greater than the sum of its parts.

Forward Looking

There is a term: "forward looking", that in business describes a method of decision-making with the implication that it is strategic rather than short-sighted; planned instead of reactionary. This applies to all aspects of life, not just business. All too often people react rather than plan, deny rather than fix, flee rather than fight.

Since the start of the year I've been honestly and abrasively looking forward in my own life, comparing the path I've put myself on to the future I wanted for myself, and realizing that there were no roads that connected the two. What I saw was that I had been in deep denial about the future of the company I was working for, that I couldn't see a particularly fruitful or fulfilling future there for myself or my team, and more importantly, that I couldn't imagine leaving that job for a carbon copy of it, starting the cycle over again, not bettering my situation, instead simply moving it somewhere else, like I had done in the past, over and over again.

For 3 months, this realization, as well as my father's words echoing in my head (something about not leaving a job without having an offer from someplace else, or maybe it was about hatching chickens) kept me mostly undecided about what to do to fix this. I was flat out miserable, this I knew. I woke up every day dreading going to work, even though I worked from home and all I had to do was turn on my laptop or dial into a meeting. I spent time and energy looking for other work and talking with a few other companies, but nothing seemed like a step forward, instead everything seemed like a step to one side or the other. Like dancing.

Dancing around the issue, perhaps.

Rather than continue to tango with inevitability, then, I finally and simply handed in my resignation. I realized that as scary as it was, I had to terminate the abusive and unhealthy relationship I have had with my career. I needed to do this swiftly and unequivocally, leaving no room for greyness or misinterpretation. I decided to jump out of the airplane, and check for my parachute on the way down rather than dick around in the door and risk losing my nerve.

I realized that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. But I'm damn sure that it's not what I've been doing. I'm not cut out for the corporate bullshit, I want off this stupid ladder.

The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

So the first step, now that I'm in free fall, is to clear my head. Reboot my mind. In order to do that, I need to restore my emotional and physical health. I have quit smoking, quit eating junk food, and quit drinking (at least for the foreseeable future). I will be exercising daily in an effort to get back into the physical health I was in just two years ago. I'm going to focus on the things that, while working, I never made enough time for.

Writing. Reading. Making music. Drawing. Crossword puzzles. Long motorcycle rides to nowhere. Hobby programming.

Like leaving an abusive relationship with a woman, I need to find myself, my own identity, and most importantly, my own values before I can move on to a new partnership. Nothing short of that would be right for me, or whoever I re-engage my career path forward with. It's terrifyingly exciting.

I won't be working for the Man ever again, because now I AM The Man.

But for now...

Lawrence: Well, what about you now? what would you do?
Peter: Besides two chicks at the same time?
Lawrence: Well, yeah.
Peter: Nothing.
Lawrence: Nothing, huh?
Peter: I would relax... I would sit on my ass all day... I would do nothing.
Lawrence: Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.  

- Office Space