The Continuity of Things

Dear yous,

What's up?  I just quit my job again.  And I'm starting to feel that joy.

For me, this is a deep issue.  I mean, you know, jobs = survival in this capitalist reality.   So....people have stuff tied to it.   Or, I do, anyway.

The reality for me is that I'm only in this job because it was a direct result of me calling a random temp agency in the paper one day after leaving college.  Got hired.  Promoted to corporate.  Became consultant.  Quit for a few years (kinda).  Back again.  Quitting again.  Leaving.  Changing my path.

I mean, the job itself, the career advancement, some of the travel, the flexibility, all that, that's good.  And I've enjoyed the perks of that well enough.  However, the perks in and of themselves are not raison d'être.  And it's terribly isolating working at home, especially if you struggle to reach out to people sometimes.

The job itself - the industry, as a heavily regulated one - entails lots of detail orientation.  I'm on the regulatory / IT side of things.  Or will have been, I should say, come December 6.  The devil is in the details, they say.

Now a funny thing just occurred to me, thinking of the date December 6: though this year Dec 6 falls on a Wednesday, next year it won't.  The funny thought is that time is continuous.  The breaks, the jumbles, the fact that Dec 6 is not a Wednesday next year is not fundamental.

What is fundamental is continuity.  Life is continuous.  Details are not continuous.

The first time I quit my consulting gig, I did quit officially, on paper and in an email.  But in my mind, I always knew I could go back.  So I never really left it.  And so here I am again.  That's kinda how it works, I'm finding.  So now I have a date.

And what happens next, I have no fucking idea but don't really care either, in the sense that I'm letting it go and enjoying the feeling of freedom.  I am not worried.  I have confronted much more fundamental fears and this doesn't measure up.

And the truth is I have skills out the wazoo.  I'm autodidactic.   I would even say I'm an autodidactic polymath.

What I really want to do, yous, is music.  That's why I quit in the first place.  I even blogged about it at the time.

Then, I didn't really know music in a way I could describe with language.  I could play by ear.  I could hear what comes next, but didn't know why.

Now I have a language.  It's the common language - the common western theory - I get that just fine now.  But it extends beyond that.  I've developed my own visual language to understand music.  Plus, to talk myself up a bit, I have enough skills in that area, enough level of mastery - writing, playing, performing, recording, theory - that I now feel I can rely on these skills.  Music has taken care of me, now I can take care of music in my own way.  Keep it going.  Keep it healthy.  Contribute to its continuity.  Be part of a community.

That's the thing I really struggled with, yous, the past few years, the past all the years: it's yous.  Other people.  I didn't understand myself, my motivations, fears, desires, and so I didn't understand others'.  You can operate at the level of society without really connecting to anyone, without really understanding the underlying meaning behind language and human relationships.  I feel like I understand the fundamental reason now and am grateful for that.

(It's survival)

(Ultimately)

(But what isn't?)

Peace!
Casey

P.S.  And of course, in moments of true connection with others, sexual and otherwise, the experience, I've found, is far beyond anything language can describe.  It's fundamental.