Resignation, Reality and Robocop - Leaving Work in 2 weeks time!!!

The word of the week is perspicacity. 

Jan 9 - Technology is MAGICAL!!!!! 

Oh, wow... 

Technology can sometimes amaze me, I mean REALLY blow my mind; the video below is proof of that!! Why is it so special, you ask? 


Terran Trade Authority - Spacecraft 2000-2100AD from Adrian Mann on Vimeo.

Because it brought the pictures from my mind's eye as a child to LIFE! 

Background: In 1978, I received a large hardcover glossy-illustrated book called Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD, which I still have. Inside was page after page of fictional wonder: descriptions of spacecraft that never were, yet COULD have been, drawn in loving detail in 'action' with accompanying descriptions that told the story of each ship. Dozens of ships. It was mana from heaven to a young mind like mine was and I ate it up - I love the book still. 

Now those VERY SAME ships have been brought to life via the wonder of CGI and the dedication of one person named Adrian Mann. I cannot BEGIN to describe how PERFECTLY he has captured EVERY ONE of those drawings and brought each ship to life. Every picture from the book is replicated, from ship to foreground to background, with the exact colour palette and contextual to the description of the action going on in the scene depicted. It is truly WONDROUS to see what had( until now )only lived inside my imagination these thirty-some-odd years... to see it all rendered in motion left me speechless and applauding at the end. Remarkable. 

THAT is why I love technology, and always will: it can bring imagination to life!

Jan 10 - Joy Of Books 

I love bookstores; as much as they tempt me into NOT leaving without at least a small stack of tomes, I still just love the quiet possibilities that the shelves full of all kinds of books offer. The magic and the wonder of a good bookstore is captured in the video below, put together by a staffer of Type bookstore in Toronto. It's just spellbinding and magical to watch: 

Jan 11 - Real Robocop in Detroit? 

From books to bad guys: the cyborg cop of fictional film is going to get a life-size statue in Detroit! The Kickstarter.com project got full funding earlier this year and apparently is in full production swing this spring. Check out their blog page to see how this fascinating project came into being - it's not every day that a fictional character gets such support and following to turn them from an idea into reality. I'm tempted to take a detour through Detroit( scary as that is! )to snap a pic of myself and Robocop sometime in the future - which I am sure is just what the city's showrunners want people to think of doing. Go Robo! 

One person's concept... NOT mine!!!

Jan 12 - Super Dreams 

I don't usually talk about my dreams, which almost always are intricate and not that exciting( ie. violent or scary ). No, my dreams often reflect what my subconscious is going through, so for the last long while it's been a lot of longing for old days( repeat dreams from years ago, if you can believe it )and anxiety. As in the kind where you're suddenly standing naked in front of a huge crowd for no reason. Tonight, I had the 'Airplane Dream' again, where I was the pilot but I didn't know how to fly. Yet I was expected to take a plane full of unsuspecting passengers up into the sky without them knowing I wasn't qualified. There were more layers to it than that, though; something else was going on where I couldn't TELL anyone I wasn't a pilot, and I also knew that if I DID try to take off, I would crash the plane and kill us all. So that's the kind of 'anxiety dream' that I have, similar to other ones where I have to make a getaway in a suddenly-tiny car, or I am about to take a test and realize I didn't study nearly hard enough. I really hate those sorts of dreams... I much prefer the far-rarer ones where I'm a superhero! 

Not for the tights though; it's always about the cape, and flying free... speaking of which, the next entry below sums up that sentiment!

Friday the 13th - LEAVING MONEY MART !!!!!! 

BIG DAY.

It was a double today; open at Colwood, close at Cloverdale. Last one of those EVER that I will have to do though, as today I handed in my resignation to MMart, with 2 weeks notice. 

FINALLY.

I wanted to shout it out on FBook, out the window and to every customer that came in the door... but I kept my composure and spoke to my DM first to see how he wanted to handle it and make my decision then. He took the time to briefly speak to me at Cloverdale, so I had to wait until the afternoon; we both decided to leave the announcement until the staff party, which seemed all right to me. Staff will still have a week to get used to me leaving, and after that they'll only see me when I drop by on occasion with coffees... at least until everyone gets switched around or leaves, both of which are inevitable. 

It was tiring; I worked 13.5 hours, with a 30 min 'break' on the bus between stores. It was steady but not crazy( save for a few rushes )but I still crawled into bed exhausted well before midnight; I've picked up a cold this week from another manager and it's really socking it to me, starting with a sore throat. 

But I am DONE. The end is in sight. Shockingly, nobody has tried to talk me out of leaving, which I think is a clear sign that they all KNOW I need to go. 

Rather telling about the stress levels of the job, isn't it? 

Jan 14 - Why is it so BUSY when I'm already so tired? 

It's fitting that the day after I'd given my notice that I feel totally exhausted, like a marathon runner, perhaps. The cold is in full energy-draining swing and though the sore throat is lapsing, the runny nose has started. I was alone today at Colwood and the people would NOT stop coming in the door ALL day - by the end of my shift I had served one freakin' customer every 6.5 minutes; that's 6 customers an hour, not including all the usual phone calls that pour in. Toss in a fair number of 'please fix this' situations and I was VERY glad to go home to nurse my nose and doze on and off all evening 

I should mention I HATE colds; I really do, as I use the anger and annoyance that I've caught someone ELSE's germs to fight back against the tiny little buggers. A simmering annoyance throughout the day really kicks the body into getting rid of the cold, as long as you keep your energy levels up, I find. Sitting back and letting them have their way with my immune system smacks of surrender to me, and I fight against things I can't control with all my energy, when it makes sense. So far, my colds have all packed it in in just a few days, when I give them the Immune System Glare Boost... and take care of myself with fluids, rest and things like chicken soup and herbal supplements. 

Jan 15 - Damned Colds!!! 

My cold was in full swing today, but I went into work anyway - ALL the area staff were at a training seminar for tax season today, so there was no-one to spare. I had my trainee with me though, so she handled all the customers( a steady stream today )while I did my best with paperwork and tried to stay focused as my nose ran, plugged and ran again randomly. My trainee got me some chicken soup for lunch( on her! )and that helped for a while, but by day's end it was all I could do to keep focused to help her close on time. 

On a brighter note, I logged into NWN a little later after getting home to a lovely dinner of meatloaf( with mustard, yum! )to find another old friend had found our server. They went by the name of Jade and we chatted for a bit, not really catching up for all that long as I was very, very tired and nursing my nose. It was great to see them after a few years absence; they found my current server via my postings on Nichneven.com, which is one of the purposes of having that site - any of my old online friends can easily find it and see where I'm gaming. Have to love the connected world we're in now... 

That's about it; I'll struggle again through tomorrow and send myself home early ASAP when the closer arrives. I feel like I need to sleep at least 24 hours to get this cold out the door, as my sister is visiting this week and I don't want to be housebound OR give her the cold, gods forbid! To bed with a pile of Fisherman's Friend tablets beside me! 

Goals, Gotye and Goofs

The word of the week is renewal.

Jan 2 - Searching

As my 'career change' will happen in less than a month, I've been compiling all sorts of job-related articles to read - I have been for over a year, really. From ones like The 50 Best Careers of 2011 to Canada's Top 100 Employers to Pay Attention to What You Envy to Discover Work That You Love ( that's a long title! ), I'm going all-out to keep myself thinking ahead... while I still wonder if I'll get EI to help prolong my job search beyond a month or two. Ideally, I'd be able to take the next six months off to decompress. I'd be able to really dig into my writing while looking for jobs that will fit ME, not the other way around. Not to mention getting a lot of my To Do List done, with things like developing an exercise routine and getting a handle on my massive book collection( ie. document what titles I have, what to sell, what to keep )among other things. Six months - sounds like a pipe dream, yet I can but try; I've done a lot of what I've set out to do ten years ago, so this isn't much different, I just have to work on a tighter schedule of months, not years...

Jan 3 - Gotye

Quirky music and I go back a long way, to when I listened to songs from the old Doctor Demento Show. Songs such as 'Star Trekkin' and 'Wolf Creek Pass' were purposely funny ballads, designed to make you smile as you sung along( or hummed, in my case ). I like those sorts of songs FAR more than I should admit, though I also have an enduring love of deeper-layered works such as Sound Of Silence - it's a weird mix, but then so am I, some days. So when a work friend said this was her favourite song, I listened for a bit and was hooked; the video is quirky too. Have a gander and enjoy the mix of the quirky AND the sad that Gotye brings to their work in this song: 




There's already a great acoustic cover of the song here by Walk Off The Earth, though minus the cool visual art sequence of the original.

Jan 4 - Oops, missed!

The misfortunes of others are a rife source for comedy, sadly speaking about the human ability to laugh at another's pain. Yet we all do it, to various degrees; I myself draw the line at intentional violence, but the unintended nutshot so often featured on America's Funniest Home Videos will still get me to chuckle. As will mishaps of all kinds, such as this one:



And yes, the cat lived, in case you wondered - it's in the video comments!

Jan 5 - Zombie Trail game?

Many years ago, I remember playing a basic pioneer-adventure game called Oregon Trail, which teachers loved as it taught history at the same time. I just remember that it really sucked to be a pioneer in this game, as you usually died - but it was still fun to play to see if you COULD survive to win. Now I've found a spiritual successor to that game, a parody if you will: Organ Trail. It's built along the same very basic lines: get a station wagon full of survivors across a devastated America full of radiation and zombies by balancing your dwindling supplies with taking risks. It's the first game of it's kind that I can recall that captures the full breadth of the 'zombie apocalypse' in trying to reach a distant 'safe haven' by your wits alone. Try it out; it takes about an hour to play, so see if you can make it to the end with all five of your survivors alive and intact.

Jan 6 - A week to go

I thought about saving these few thoughts until after I left MMart, but they've been popping up in my head fairly regularly for the last year. In the main, I've been thinking on how I've been regularly employed for the last twenty years; sure, 17 of those were at 3 jobs, plus a few years as a party clown and my first job at the long-defunct Canadian arm of Rax Restaurants. So more than twenty years, with probably no more than 2 weeks of work missed due to illness or other serious problems in all that time - not a bad record. A week from now, I'm going to be putting MYSELF out of work on purpose, to avoid serious illness or other problems - hows' that for irony? Yet it's long overdue; even typing this paragraph, I'm making mistakes that didn't happen years ago, due to my mental exhaustion and desire to do ANYTHING else other than continue at my current job.

If I can't even summon the desire and ability write, which is my passion, then there's absolutely no point in continuing as things are. I need to leave for a new path, wherever it takes me, no matter how unknown a future that is.

Jan 7 - Best of 2011

2012 is here, so the inevitable looking-back-on-2011 articles are flooding the web. Thankfully, there doesn't seem to be a lot of schmaltz out there, at least not at the sites I frequent. Lifehacker.com has a great Best Of 2011 article that contains a metric ton of interesting and useful articles from the last year. There's also Metacritic's Best of 2011, plus TechSpot's Best Gadgets of 2011 and even Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2011, in many different categories.

And: 2012 has already seen a stellar gadget, The OLPC tablet... for roughly $100! Tech keeps advancing - sweet! Next thing you know, they'll be erecting skyscrapers in less than a month - oh, wait, China just DID that:



Jan 8 - Washing My Mind Out

Today was a bit of a wash, in some ways. I rose a little later than usual, ready to hop online and game for a bit on Xbox... but my controller batteries were both dead and refused to hold a charge. After a bit of fiddling, I managed to get one working, but it didn't charge fully so I've left it for the day - a quick search online showed they're no longer for sale most places, so that's bad. I also tried to get into NWN, but the blasted program's decided to endlessly max-and-minimize itself( ?? )in a loop when I start it under Win7. So again I tried to solve that little mystery, yet had to leave it unsolved by late afternoon; grrrr. Which left me with getting rid of the moderate headache I've had since Friday; short naps and Advils throughout the day have led me to the evening with only a few things done, but at least I've had a second day off to deal with such things, right? As an exciting close for the day, I dug into writing up a 'Departure Document' for work, an objective somewhat-brief summary of all the things that have caused me to leave, be they small, large or seemingly inconsequential. I'll be giving a copy of this to my DM and his boss, to do with as they will - most likely most of it will be ignored, yet I can't just let things go without documenting why I'm leaving in as non-bitter a way as I can manage. I'm being honest, and it also lets me express for myself the many, many reasons WHY I'm leaving, so I can clearly see why it's right for me to go.

I think that's the best part of the whole exercise for me, mentally. Writing down all the things that have driven close to crazy over the years, so I can let them all go.

Yes, I make up all my haiku's myself, as I find my creativity returning the closer I draw to my last day at MMart. From there, I can only grow and thrive in a new life... as I intended to do 4 years ago when I moved to BC. A little delayed, but I am finally getting there!

Friendship, Finales and Doing Just Fine

The word of the week is finale. 

Dec 26 - Friendship 

Boxing Day was something I skipped again this year, though some other people stood in line at 6am for some good bargains - not me, as I already managed to score a sweet new TV this fall despite some crazy-making machinations( on Oct 27th ) to get it. No, I just worked today( it was steady, not busy )and went home only a little tired. 

Today was instead about friends; I received an email from a good friend about my decision to leave the soul-and-body-killing job I have now to strike out into the unknown. They were incredibly supportive, relating stories of similar choices from their own life and how those choices to jump into the wild have paid off in spades - they are doing what they want to do, on their own terms, and doing more than just surviving day to day. I spoke to them on the phone later in the evening, again just thrilled that I am so lucky to have people of such quality in my life; I don't think I do nearly as much for others as they do for me. I try to be the best person I can be, the best friend I can be and take what comes from that with as much grace and dignity as I can manage. Apparently it's the right thing to do, as I still have many  fantastic friends! 

Though I still manage somehow to forget the occasional birthday. :-/ 

Dec 27 - Aaron visits! 

True friendship stands the test of time; despite the years between meetings, friends for life will meet as though only days have passed since you last met. Such was the case with my friend Aaron today, who went out of his way to visit me here in Victoria for a few hours, over from Vancouver. I picked him up from the bus station and drove out to Langford, where we had lunch at The Fountain Diner( delicious pancakes! )and then took a quick trip to see my place on Bear Mountain. We talked all the while about life in general, catching up( sometimes awkwardly on my part )and really enjoyed each other's company - again, the mark of a true friend. It really felt like only a few weeks since I'd last seen him, though in truth it had been over 6 years, at his wedding. Having friends like Aaron makes life worthwhile, as they reflect on your own worth: like finds like, and in this case we've found each other for life. That is beyond price and worth crossing continents for, in my mind. 

Dec 28 - Respect at work? Too late.

While I was at work today, I received a call from another work DM I've worked with elsewhere in BC; apparently he heard through the grapevine in HR that I was leaving and wanted to talk to me - not talk me out of it, just talk. I was impressed that I'd made an impression on him and we jawed about various work issues for a good half-hour while I sat outside in my van, watching the rain soak the Island as it has all week. He mentioned quite a few things that I had suspected, that all was not sunshine in the company and that it was making 'incredible' people such as myself jump ship. I was friendly and tactful, as I respect this particular DM and kept things to topics that I could comment on without being bitter, just truthful. It was an insightful and illuminating conversation that I could have used five years ago, though it would not have made a difference to my paycheque or to the direction the company would still have taken. No, it was the level of respect for my abilities, skills and experience I think that I was thankful for the most, things that until this call I had never thought anyone in MMart would acknowledge in any more than the most shallowly briefest of mentions. It made me feel good, in that the decision to leave IS the right one, that I have rightly sensed the ship is sinking by the captain's own hand and it is time to set sail on my own. 

Dec 29 - 15 years ago, snow! 

There's been none of the white stuff( snow... )in Victoria so far this winter, which is part of the point of living here. I've only met a few locals who expressed a wish for a white Christmas; the rest seem quite content not to have to don boots and grab snow shovels every few days for months at a time. Yet every year is different; back in 1996, Victoria broke a ton of records for the most snowfall in 24 hours, even worse than when I was here in 2008. They called it a 'Whitemare' though I don't think it was as bad as the Blizzard of '77, which was called 'The White Death' - I remember it as a small child, being pulled on a sled along the center of our street. The snow was piled so high in continuous banks that I couldn't see even the tops of houses the entire trip to the corner store; we had a pile on our front lawn that was turned into a snow fort that was the last thing to melt anywhere around. That was cool.

Dec 30 - Hard-won wisdom 

Here's some hard-earned wisdom for you, that I thought I'd pass along at the end of this, one of the hardest years of my life. There's been many a difficult year, but none of them have put me under the physical and emotional stress that this one has, at almost continuous levels. 

Which is where the wisdom comes in: experience. If you are presented with a problem and deal with it, you learn for the next time. If it's an emotional stress, then you'll have that in your toolkit when dealing with similar situations, be they of the heart or of the mind( especially love ). 

That's it - simple. If you haven't had to deal with a situation before, you'll survive it( believe you will )and the next time you'll go into it knowing you've licked it before. Nobody likes dealing with the unknown, but it gets easier with time... and experience.

Dec 31 - Novel New Year's Eve 

The last day of the year should always be a time of reflection, as well as of celebration. Nowadays it's more of the former than the latter, and tonight was no exception; after work, I stayed in... not having any invites to go out also contributed to that decision, too. I used the time to relax and to polish off the novel outline I'd been working on for the last three months, which didn't amount to much new work, just a lot of tidying. Most of it had been percolating in my pickled brain since the end of August( and before )so most of my evening was a relaxed re-working of some solid ideas into a whole. Which turned out to be something I was quite happy with, re-reading - there's room for depth, action, character development and a happy half-dozen other things that all combine into good novel material. I dislike being constrained in my material, and with this outline I think I can really stretch my writing skills to bring the reader along for a close ride with my creations. 

Old Year shuffles past,

Patting New Year on the head.

"You'll do just fine, kid." 

I watched the ball drop in Niagara Falls on live TV, too. And I listened to Zooey Deschanel sing a lovely duet about New Year's Eve, have a listen: 

Jan 1 - New Beginnings And Tattoos

The first day of a new year; 2012 should see MANY positive changes in my life, most of them by MY choice, for a change. A month from now I will be happily( if a little nervously )unemployed, freeing up my time to pursue my writing ambitions. I'll also be looking for a new job, which will coincide with a true career search - more and more, customer service seems to be unappealing, as I want to leverage my skills along WITH my creativity and so try to avoid trading one stressful job for another. I'll also be working on my social life, checking out local groups to join and places to meet people, whom I'll be showing a much truer vision of myself to than the sad, exhausted, angry, emotional zombie I've been for the last few years. Happiness is change! 

At noon I saw The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo with a friend; we both agreed it was an unhappy tale with a LOT of hard-to-watch scenes, that also spoke about the possibility of redemption in a harsh world. The film was quite dark visually and story-wise, I have to say; I didn't read the books, and I still may not for a while. Definitely NOT a date movie! That didn't stop me from enjoying the rest of the evening in NWN; part of my day earlier was spent watching back-to-back episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is a well-written cartoon series that encompasses the changes happening in an interesting world where the four elements define each of the nations involved in a developing struggle for power. The series is MUCH better than the 2010 movie( utter crap )so if you want to watch a quality story develop with interesting characters, have a go.

A positive new year begins - watch this space for good news in 2012!!!!