Frank Yang’s blog

So.

Fucking.

Bored.

It's 1PM on Monday afternoon and I've already been in and out of the office.  I am currently a contractor for  at a major Canadian newspaper and this has essentially been a microcosm of my employment existence for the past year.  Feast, famine, when it rains, it pours, etc etc.  Currently it's famine.  When I've had projects to work on, it's inevitably been with an unreasonable, ultra-tight deadline that we somehow manage to clear, if just barely, but after that the rapid decompression is like employment bends.  If I did my job well and proper, there's very little to do after the fact.  There's inevitably a list of "nice to haves" on someone's desk somewhere, but no one wants to look at them and thus, my task list shrinks to zero and I have no compelling reason to go into the office.  Initially the time off is nice but after a while, it (and the lack of income) becomes boring.  I'm fine financially for a while (hay was made when the opportunity presented itself) but unidirectional balance sheets are always a little unnerving.

As there has been for the past few months, there is talk and promises of bringing me on full time though understandably at a greatly reduced pay scale.  Part of me would relish the stability this would bring though the loss of freedom and flexibility would be a sacrifice.  However I'm not a young young man anymore and a decent, steady job is not something to be discounted.  But that said, I'm also ready to start looking for something else - not aggressively, but certainly it'd be nice to see what my other opportunities are.  The problem is that doing something more in line with what I really enjoy, ie music/pop culture/writing/the blog, would pay far far less than what I'm making now and that's not especially appealing.  Is money everything?  No - but there's also the factor of eternal grief from my parents.  They've still not entirely forgiven me for abandoning my burgeoning engineering career seven years ago.  Did I say burgeoning?  I meant stillborn.

My employment malaise is no doubt related to the general apathy that is currently defining my existence.  It seems that almost every facet of life has hit a rut, ground to a halt, what have you.  I have no band whatsoever for the first time in half a decade, while I'm pretty much recovered from the end of my last relationship this past Summer I'm still acutely aware of that gaping void in my life, my friends continue to drift further out of orbit as they move, marry, procreate, whichever.  I currently have no concerts on the sched for December - I fear that I won't leave the house at all once the holiday season rolls around.  I said when I gave up the regimented daily posting at CW that I was going to get a life - something that's apparently easier said than done.  I'm not depressed but I'm not NOT depressed, if that makes sense.  I just... am.  And that's not really doing it for me at the moment.

So I guess that's what I'll be using this Vox dealie for - the general personal ruminations that I don't really want to broadcast to my usual readership.  Or my Mom.  Of course, the fact that I'm leaving these open to the public to view implies that the latent exhibitionist in me still wants an audience but we won't get into that particular portion of the psyche just now.

so what does one do when their main blog is running them ragged?  start another one.

yeah, I have no idea what I'm doing with this.