the day the life-inversion started...

(I'm really busy this week. Stupid busy. So I'm taking a shortcut today and re-posting something. Technically, considering that I didn't post it here, it's new. At least to here, it is.)

My very first blog post wasn't on a blog, per se. At the end of February, 2009, I made a choice. A big one. I felt so good about it that, sans blog, I posted it as a Facebook note. One day I may grow up and migrate everything to a fancy blog-site with pages and stuff. Until then, I thought I would save this for posterity.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

I quit my job today...

The scariest part of any climb, for me, isn't going up or coming down. It's that moment in between when you have to lean back and trust the rope and let gravity have it's way. When you let go and just hang there. I've been on the edge for months now, clinging to the lip, afraid to let go. Today I finally leaned back all the way.

It's a good feeling, overcoming that little fear in the pit of your stomach and fully leaning back into the rappel. You never really know until you do it whether the rope will hold you, no matter how careful you are, so the trusting is like a small victory. It's the commitment that feels good -- knowing there's no going back and doing it anyway.

It was a long time coming, the letting go, certainly longer even than the two years I worked at River Cree. I'd be lying though if I tried to say that RC didn't make the decision that much easier, or that it didn't expedite the process. It would also be tempting to say that I quit in response to my boss being fired, but that also would be a lie. It may have affected the timing, but not the decision; That one was already in the bag.

I've had problems with the casino industry for a long while, and made a promise to myself back in 2004 that I'd be out of gaming within five years. I promised myself I'd finally write that novel I'd wanted to write for forever. I promised myself I'd do something better. Until the last six months I thought I'd be breaking that promise, but here I am. I guess somebody or something was watching.

I am finally and fully disenchanted with everything that makes a corporation tic: The disingenuous leadership practices; the ties; the duplicitous peer interactions; the utter lack of concern for the well being of employees; the legally-mandated disregard for everything except the bottom line; all of it. All of these things make me more than a little queasy now, and every day spent having to make compromises to get the job done in even the best work cultures felt like a day lost. RC exemplifies the worst of these characteristics in every way I can think of, so my experience there amplified my profound sense of unease and dissonance. Right now, sitting here, I'm fucking thrilled to be free of the morass of ineffective leadership that typified my experience at RC. Absofuckinglutely thrilled.

But there are drawbacks to leaving without notice as I felt compelled (released?) to do today. The worst is not being able to say goodbye to all of the truly terrific people that work there who didn't happen to be handy this afternoon. I wish I hadn't made people go in on their day off. I wish I hadn't messed the schedule up. I wish I'd had the chance to speak to everyone that I respected and appreciated, to say thanks and goodbye, but that didn't happen.

That said, I'm still glad that I'm gone.

I appreciate everything that the last nine years has taught me, about the world, business and me. I appreciate knowing that I'm off to a better whatever, and that the worst day after today will still be better than the best day I spent making compromises. Even more, I appreciate getting out alive and truly understanding how much that world simply doesn't fit for me: How uncomfortable it felt, like a cheap suit or a tie.

I like an adventure, and turning my world inside-out like I plan to do over the next few months or years will qualify nicely. I'm feeling excited as much as anything else, like everything is about to get scarier and shinier at the same time. I told my brother today that turning my frown upside down seemed like too much work, so I thought I'd try inverting my life instead. This is my life-inversion. This kind of change can be damned fun.

I will not, will not, miss the ties.

(Thanks for joining me in this jaunt down memory lane. I'd love to hear your life-inversion story if you have one you want to share. If the world doesn't end, I promised a friend that I'd *gulp* post a poem later this week as another escape from writing a new post. I guess it would be a bit histrionic to wish for the end of the world, yeah?)

“The reason of a resolution is more to be considered than the resolution itself.” Sir John Holt

Three guesses as to why (no pun intended - read on for that to make sense) I chose this one for today's post, and the first two don’t count.

Of the W5 questions, I consider ‘why’ to be the most important. It isn’t in journalism, of course, and that’s fine, but to me why is the question. Our motives inform our actions far more than the other way around, some would say entirely (I’d be more on their side), so the quest to understand the why of a choice, an action, a motive, even a resolution, can tell us far more about a given situation or ourselves than any clinical understanding of the facts; the who, what, when or how. When we understand why, we understand something at the deepest level.

I remember, when I was involved in the church, that my pastor considered this concept somewhat subversive. I had suggested that god, a truly loving and caring god, in god’s infinite wisdom and omniscience, would understand the why of us, of our actions, of our thoughts, perceptions, actions and motives, and that, if god, a truly loving and caring god, were even inclined to judge us, that god would do so based on the why regardless of the outcome of our imperfect how or when or what. Apparently that was slightly heretical on several levels and it marked the beginning of a slow exodus out of organized religion for me.

I don’t embrace atheism any more than I embrace a specific theism these days, mostly because I see the concept as, a) too unimaginative, b) contrary to my own anecdotal experience, and c) as rigid and intractable as any of the major religions themselves. I prefer to stay open to the possibilities a bit more than that. I also can’t say as there is any one belief system that presses all of my happy buttons either; I mistrust any and all institutions, for the very act of becoming an institution is a corruption of the natural state of change that marks the character of the world around us. Instead, I prefer the pick-a-part, do-it-yourself method, eclectically and optimistically assuming some truth in the blind-guys-feeling-up-an-elephant explanation for all of the similar yet different versions of faith that sprout up around the world. I assume that most (though definitely not all) seekers have and are looking for an explanation for the unexplainable, and so assume that most (though definitely not all) have caught some piece of the truth even if just by accident. I spend my time sorting through the Olympic-sized pools of murky bathwater looking for whatever pieces of the baby I can find. And that works for me.

This time of year traditionally involves an often comical and almost always ironic tradition of making resolutions that are designed to improve our lives in some way through the next year, sort of a pin the tail on the donkey kind of goal setting and self-improvement. I’ve never been a big fan, admittedly because I have a very, very mediocre success rate at keeping to resolutions. And I’m okay with that too. I’ve learned (and am learning) that my best goals are my simplest ones and that, converse to traditional thinking, they work best when set with very little structure but extremely profound intent. I focus first on the why, then the what, and finally the how and when. (I’ve learned to never try to include any who’s but me in any of my goals – it leaves me wiggle room, and I apparently need wiggle room.) By focusing first on the why of a thing I tend to ensure that if I choose to do something, it will be for the right reasons. I may fail utterly at the what, how and when, but I will know going in that my why was pristine. For me, that self-trust is intrinsic to everything else.

So my resolution is the same one as last year: To continue my search for a perpetually more profound understanding of why.

I’m not suggesting you do the same, but if you like try asking yourself why you are making the resolutions you are making. See if you’re happy with your reasons, if they are the kinds of reasons that make the sacrifices worthwhile making. See if this tiny exercise changes your understanding of the choices you are making.