I promise...

...that my next post will be much lighter and more humorous than the following excerpt; I just feel the need to tackle some dark uglies right now and I ask that you bear with me for a moment.


Rather, I feel compelled to expound upon some of the internal conflict I continue to feel as a result of my decision to leave the Active Duty Air Force.


The frustration.  The anxiety.  The irritation (with myself and others).  The anger.


A little background:  I just got back from a job interview in Phoenix for a position with a large, successful transportation company.  In between the screenings, however, I was hounded by a recruiter from Colorado with another job opportunity who needed additional information from me.  This all took place while I simultaneously thought about the one job offer (in sales) that I need to decline, the two-day interview I need to prep for next week, and another follow-up discussion I need to have (with a different company) this Friday.  Oh, yea, and I have an interview on Saturday.


I know I have no one to blame except myself and I know these are good problems to have.


Or are they?

Screenshot:  I am troubled by the truth of this quote...

That quote and passage from The Black Swan continues to haunt me despite the fact that I read that book months ago.


The reason being is that I elected to leave the Air Force primarily to escape societal expectations and to forge my own path whether that was through running or traveling or painting or volunteering or fishing or a combination thereof.


All I know now is that I got sucked right back into what I wanted to avoid:  knowing my next 20 years.


My bravery lasted all of 51 days.


Bravo, Kate, bravo.


I guess I can't be too hard on myself though.  I did make the leap right?  I knew I would never love what I was about to do (transition away from being around the guys and breaking shit to sitting behind a desk and worrying about how to get through the next decade as a perpetual kiss ass) and so I jumped.

 

Screenshot:  Cross-blog pollination...or blog cross-pollination...whatever.

But now what?

First, I guess I have to keep fighting the good fight.  I have a lot of folks in my corner that are going to keep me straight and tell me not to get a job right away (HT to my dad's timely emails today amidst the panic).

Second, I think I keep writing.  Lame, I know, but it's like Kamal Ravikant recently said, 

"I understand now why the great [writers] become alcoholics and kill themselves 'cause you have to go into your mind and into your heart and emotions and pull out – go through everything, stuff that most of us spend our lives avoiding.  So you have to write – for a great writer, to be a great writer or artist, you really have to go into yourself.  And we spend our entire lives running away from ourselves.  You have to go through the gunk."

Gunk exploration and dissection sound about right (without the whole suicide thing in Ketchum, ID or ripping off my ear or something).

Oh, this is probably a good place to state the obvious:  I AM NOT SUICIDAL!  KATE LOVES KATE TOO MUCH TO HURT KATE.

 

Video clip:  HT to Bob Ryan during the T.O. suicide scare of 2006.

Sticking with the literary vein though, maybe those artists and writers were on to something.

Screenshot:  We'll go with Melville's take on life (versus Hemingway's) for the moment.

All I can hope for is that this tortured self-exploration results in some sort of coherent career strategy and the appropriate destruction of a life half-lived.