The Beer Retard - July 3rd, 2006

I believe the time has finally come. After 15 years of working a series of soul-sucking office jobs, I've finally had enough. I've only been at my current job for 9 months and I'm already fighting a strong impulse to simply walk out of the place and not come back. Usually, it takes at least a year or two for me to hit the wall like this. I guess my tolerance level is dropping.

It's nothing against my present employer, supervisor or co-workers. This is one of the most pleasant work environments I've experienced. If repetitive, meaningless office work was something I could do for the long haul, I could imagine staying here for quite awhile. Unfortunately, I'm just not able to hack it. My life, in all likelihood, may be half over and I can't fathom continuing it in this way for much longer. You only live once (at least that's the assumption I'm operating under) and I don't want to spend the majority of what time I have left festering away in an office stapling documents and mouse clicking until my arm falls off and my eyes fail me.

I've decided that I'll work out the rest of 2006 and save up as much money as possible. 2007 will be the start of a new life for me. I'm not entirely sure what that life will be, but I have the next 6 months (maybe a bit less than that as far as planning goes) to figure it out. decadentscholar and I have been talking about all kinds of projects, none of which are likely to be financially feasible.

My favorite idea is the one where we do nothing but travel from film festival to film festival (the more off the beaten path the better) for an entire year (or 6 months if a year is impossible, which it most certainly is), interviewing people (using sult as an inspiration) and documenting our experiences through a website and possibly a book. Financially, there's no way in hell we could do it. DS seems to think we might be able to get sponsored or start some kind of nonprofit and get funding, but I don't think we're likely to get people giving us money to watch movies and interview film festival people and movie directors/actors.

A more likely and possible scenario would be me doing an internship at SIFF and traveling to some film festivals during Jan-Mar of 2007, living off my savings and immersing myself in film. I can ultimately envision some kind of scenario where I work for several months at some job (anything that pays enough and doesn't resemble the work I've done in the past) to replenish my funds and then take several months to pursue my interests and see what comes of it. So I guess I'm not swearing off meaningless jobs altogether. I'll do what I need to do to survive. I just need to take some time to see if I can get something else going. I don't want to look back on my life some day and say that all I did from age 21 on was work in some office doing something that didn't mean a thing to me. That would be sad.