Journaling: The Future

So today was spent in large part hunting for jobs. I sent in applications or notifications of interest for around 10 different jobs ranging from sales engineer to soccer coach and everywhere from back in SoCal to Boston to here in Pittsburgh. Realistically, there are so many things a person can do, but it's remarkably difficult to know where to find them all; it pains me a little bit when I flip through job advertisements and I see how many of them require skills or experience that I not only don't have, but have no way of having without getting a similar job. I have a bad habit of translating this lack of necessary skills for many jobs into a lack of capability to do any job. It's a dangerous pessimism that's been a solid decade in the making - ever since middle school when I thought the aloof coldness of the sarcastic and negative was really cool and empowering. Little did I know it was actually debilitating in almost every aspect of my life. It'll be years before I'm really rid of it, I imagine, but for now I can probably only hope for progress (as I think I've said here before).

Today's string of applications is, I hope, the first step in me starting to face my life as a responsible adult. Not just in the way I've done for some time now (that is, paying bills on time, grocery shopping, and generally taking care of my basic needs), but in the sense that I want to approach life as a continuously engaging affair. I want to learn new things, retain the old, meet new people, go new places, expand myself in all kinds of ways. The pessimistic, doubting me always seems to think, 'No, I can't do that. I never had any training in that; it's just beyond me.' Realistically, though, it's an evolution, which, as I recently read, may result in the highly improbable, but is the accumulation of many smaller, achievable improbabilities. Recently, I've started working on learning to play the guitar (borrowing Bill's to play on), which many of you will know is something I've always wanted to do but always kinda thought I couldn't manage. I've only been at it for about a week and a half, but I'm keeping at it and making progress. Maybe it's not fast, maybe I'll still always be awkward at it, but it feels great to be learning something. More importantly, it feels great to be teaching myself something.

Basically, it's time for one of those "I'm turning over a new leaf" self-improvement ventures. Anyone who's similarly out of work and has time to kill should let me know, I'd love to have company and/or ideas for things to try out. Here's hoping I keep it up.