Where do you work?

Often when people ask me "where do you work," they are polite enough to leave off the end of the question. What they really want to say with a snicker is, "where do you work this week?" This little jab is hard to defend against, after all it's true I had 6...yes, 6 jobs this year alone?! It shocks me to hear it, but lets set the record straight by laying all the cards on the table.

Dec 2013: Left Camp Timberline and the Island of Oahu.
Jan 2014:  Desperate to work I got a job as a night stocker at Safeway. Broke my wrist a week later and had to quit, though without the injury I'm not sure I would have lasted much longer. I hated that job.... I thought it would be nice to have literally zero responsibility and not have to think, but now that I can look back on it, I realize that's also the definition of prison life....
Feb 2014: Started working at Home Depot. Spent my days selling appliances; not the worst gig ever, but it still made me realize how important it is to have challenge in somehting you do for most of your day.
June 2014: Had a cool opportunity to go up to Alaska for the summer. Kat was in China, our lease was up and my friend Kaitlin invited me up to do..."something". That something ended up being the most unique job I think I have ever had: for two months I worked on a Halibut charter boat.
September 2014: A friend offered me a job at his dive shop. The official title for the position was dry suit repair tech, unofficially named "glue sniffer". I glued things to other things...I think. That whole time is kinda' fuzzy.
September 2014: Got a second job at Lazy Boy Brewery slinging suds.
October 2014: After less than a week at Lazy Boy, I was offered a job at PC Management. It is a property management company based out of Bellevue. This job offers growth potential, good pay and full benefits. It's a pretty sweet gig; some days are better than others, but over all I can't complain too much.

What conclusions to draw from that massive list of jobs? I don't know... I freely admit I am a bit of a pessimist and am often not happy in what ever situation I am currently in, no matter how awesome it is. I do have an amazing ability to see the downside of any situation. ;)  So maybe this new job is actually perfect, maybe I'm not in love with it because I am physically unable to ever be satisfied with the thing I am doing or maybe it's just another ok job in a massive list of ok jobs. This brings me to the question I often ponder; how to choose a career?

I find that there are two equally correct and totally opposite ways to look at career selection. One argument says that your job should provide money, not satisfaction. Happiness doesn't come from a job it comes from the value you create in your life. Mike Rowe says it really well here. The other contrary thought is that you should find your passion and figure out a way for that to pay the bills, i.e. "love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life."

I have trouble with both these ideas. On the one hand, if I don't find some sort of satisfaction in something I am doing 8 hours a day 5 days a week that is a sad sad state of affairs. Working for the weekend feels like a 20 year prison sentence. On the other hand, I still haven't found a job that will pay me ridiculous amounts of money to travel the world eating amazing food. People pay people to do things for a reason...usually because the work is too icky, hard or boring for them to want to do it themselves. My current job, it pays the bills and leaves me enough time to continue working on projects, which is still important to me. Am I satisfied? no, will I ever be? I don't think so, but what's so wrong about always wanting to strive for something better, or to learn something new? I can do this job for now, not for ever but for now it fits my life.

Speaking of projects, I am feeling good about what I've been working on and if I don't love my work, so what. That job has fed, clothed and housed me plus funded all sorts of adventures:
Home made mozzarella....check
Finished the carbon fiber bike fender
Hand made sword? why not!

Carbon Fiber Bike Fender

That was the dream...a Carbon Fiber Bike Fender, but who needs school to teach you how to do it? In continuing with my goal of self education, I decided to try and tackel a project on my own. With a little help from the internet here's what I came up with:

 Carbon fiber fabric and resin from amazon 3'x1' cut into three strips.

 Using one of Kat's bike fenders as the template.

 A layer of mold release, a layer of resin then rolling out the first layer of fabric.

 First layer laid down!

 2nd and 3rd layer on!

YAY! (the wavy bits will be cut of later)

What to do?

Off to a good start this week, I could barely sleep I was so excited by the prospect of starting new projects and doing new things. Thus far this is how the week went:

I took a three hour course in coding at codecademy.com. Very interesting, I learned a lot about HTML and CSS, both are used to make websites.

Posted several adds on Craigslist requesting some one to teach me how to weld. Had a response offering lessons at a reasonable rate but not till mid October...super cool.

Contacted a local farm that raises rabbits inquiring if they would be willing to teach me about the slaughter and cleaning of the animals and to my surprise got a speedy response saying this might be a possibility in the near future. Side note the dudes name that I am talking with is Hawk...that's so awesome I can't even make it up.

I watched a TON of youtube videos on wet lay-up of carbon fiber, turns out it is exactly like making fiberglass parts (done that before) so I am going to go ahead with my first project! Start with something easy? Hell NO! I'm going to start with complex curves and tight tolerances. The first project I wanted to complete for the college course was to make bike fenders so that is what I will do on my own now. Yay for amazon.com, supplies are on their way!

I made an epic video of an awesome slip and slide we made a week ago. If your curious you can watch it here. 

Fun side note about resources. The internet is a beautiful place, there are so many free resources for learning practically anything, youtube for anything (I once rebuilt my motorcycles carburetor from a youtube video) Duolingo for basic language learning, Kahn academy for math science history programing and more, wikipedia for history (though at one time not very reliable now very accurate...though of course use responsibly)....and so many more! It is a very cool world we live in!

Day One

Thank you everyone for the great support and positive feedback. I am happy to report that Monday came and went with out me going to school and with out me second guessing my decision....too much. I did however find it difficult to try and explain to people why I wasn't in class or "what exactly is it that you do?"
The first question, although a little embarrassing, was easy enough to answer, "I wasn't ready" "I really just didn't want to go" "It's not the right path/time". The second question however was much more fundamental and something I have struggled with for years.
When asked "what do you do?" I often look to Katrina (usually standing next to me when asked) and say "Well SHE is a professor at a local community college." Which inevitably leads to further questions like "oh what do you teach?" and "gosh that sounds hard, how do you do it?" By the time the person is done grilling Kat I have stealthily moved to the other side of the room or busied myself with a very entertaining piece of lint attached to my shirt. I have become an avoidance ninja able to steer even the most uncomfortable topics to a variety of different "safe" topics. I feel uncomfortable with answering the question because, although I feel like I have done some really awesome amazing things, the things I do are often hard to quantify or the job I have doesn't define what I "do". Because of this disconnect I often add disclaimers, usually eluding to future endeavors, like school or past exploits like travel or fulfilling work. It looks a little something like this:

"so what do you do?

(shit Kat is no where to be seen...avoidance ninja GO!)
"Well, I just got back from Hawaii where I was a program director for a large non profit"*

"Wow Hawaii" he says with a twinkle in his eye, imagining palm trees and sandy beaches, avoidance ninja has done his job again...but wait. "what brought you back to Washington...its so cold?!"

"hahaha, ya I get asked that a lot..." (avoidance ninja I need you!) "I'm going to be going to school in the Fall for a degree in material science"**

"very cool, wait don't you sell appliances at Home Depot?"

(I pretend to hear someone calling from other room) "sorry, hold that thought I'll be right back"***



*translation= I was important and had a job title and buisness cards and everything...I'm an adult!
**translation= I'm very studious and am looking forward to further matriculation in this fast paced exciting future world of composites, furthermore buzz word, important detail, soft chuckle of Apollo astronaut, ya know all in a days work...p.s. I'm amazing.
***translation= Bitch....I aint never coming back, don't be fuckin' with an avoidance ninja.



In all seriousness though, I have trouble answering that question because as embarrassing as it might be to admit, I care what people think about me. That statement I feel is very taboo in my generation; it's like we are supposed to forget that there are other people out there with opinions. To form opinions is human nature. Is it so wrong of me to want those opinions to be good when referred to me? I've had this conversation with other people who say "who cares what other people think?!"    YOU.... YOU DO!  ------> Secrets...if you have a secret (ANY SECRET) from the world it's because you care what others will think about it.
OK...that might have been a bit of a tangent but I'm going to leave it and leave you with the question: In YOUR opinion How should I respond to the question "what do you do?"

A Change

I had a mini break down. I don't know if that's what you would call it but this is something that happens to me every so often, I have a sudden and overwhelming feeling of being trapped. My stomach twists into knots and I have an enormous feeling of impending doom, that soon everything I am doing is going to go horribly wrong. My knee jerk reaction is to curl up, eat food and wallow in self pity waiting for what will surely be the worst week, day, month, year of my life.
What could put my existence into such a tail spin? Well...anything, as long as I see it as an "important decision" I feel the need to over analyze. Most recently, twelve hours ago, I curled up on the couch and started binge eating chips and salsa all because I got an email from a professor saying I should buy a book. Laugh if you must but this seemingly inaquous email short circuted something and really ruined the next twelve hours*. Some of you might be saying to yourselves "professor?" Ya, so I signed up for classed at the community college to study material science (its mostly about carbon fiber). This was in answer to another small break down earlier in the year where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, but that is a story for another day. The fact is, I signed up for this awesome program because I had a good chance at a good paying job if I graduated**. Ever since signing up I have felt bad about it; it's too long of a commitment, it's a passing interest, it's too expensive, it'll be too hard, the school might be attached by extraterrestrial lizard people. Some of these concerns are more valid than others, but to say I was ever 100% committed would be a huge stretch. I think I had an easier time deciding to go to Korea! So here I am the night before starting my first day of classes in over seven years, and I couldn't do it. At the core it was a time commitment issue. I feel strongly that the only thing we have is time and how we choose to spend it is extremely important. Over and over all I could think about was being tied to this program for a set period of time and it made me feel horrible; literally sick to my stomach.
So what am I doing otherwise with my time that is so important? Not much. My current job as a dry suit repair tech entails gluing stuff to other stuff. It's not the most fulfilling thing I have ever done but the best part is the flexibility it affords me. I can go in when I want leave when I want, I just have to make sure to finish projects. For a certified commitaphobe it's a killer gig. Alas, I know myself well enough that I wont be satisfied for long not using my brain, which is why I have devised a plan....not a great plan but a plan nonetheless***. I want to learn things, actually I crave it, I love new opportunities to learn new skill as long as it doesn't come at the cost of some other experience. So my plan is to study the things that interest me, metal work, playing guitar, painting, beer, Korean, sailing, diving, writing, entrepreneurship, bicycles, small engines.....too many things to list.
I think this sounds like a good plan but there is one huge hole, how do I keep myself from being distracted after all there are so many shiny things and web pages to look at. My initial thought is a routine, but I could see myself easily slipping out of it. Maybe I could write about my adventures and post them here on a schedule so people can call me out if I start being a lazy bum...well more of a lazy bum than usual. What do you think? Any great ideas to keep me on track learning interesting new things?
Eventually I will have to find something to do as a "real job" but I'm hoping that it comes in a more organic way instead of me blindly jumping into school.
Sorry if this post was even less organized than usual, in my defense I am writing this at 4am.







*twelve hours may seem like a very short break down but this is a mini break down after all.
**This is another thought that has plagued me for many years, the idea that I need to settle down and start a career.
***What a weird word?! nonetheless? huh...

Will Work

For much of my adult life I have been concerned about where I will work and what I will be doing. To be fair I haven't let these fears get in the way too much but the thought of "how will I make my next dollar" has nagged at me. I have also had the tendancy to become bored or tired of being in one place for too long and because of this I have quite the list of past jobs:
South Lake Pizza - Cook, Driver, Manager
Kamma'aina Kids - Program Director
Holland America - Driver guide
Starbucks - Coffee Maker (not a Batista....we're in Murica)
South Hill Cycle - Bike Mechanic
LCI Kids Club Ansan - English Teacher
Wiley E Waters - White Water River Guide

This is not even half the list, a fact that I am both proud and a maybe a bit rueful of. On one hand I have been around the world, met tons of people and learned all sorts of interesting things. On the other hand I have a laughable 401k, no health care (besides the Affordable Care Act) and no real "home base" or connection to a place. For me, now, these two balance each other. I know some day in the future I will want more stability and direction but for now I am content to learn and experience all that I can, while I still can.

With all that in mind I am prepared to continue the odyssey that has gotten me this far. My goals are to 1 pay my meager bills and 2 continue to learn new things 3 have new experiences and meet new interesting people. These are pretty loose conditions for employment, and I'm hoping that you will be so kind to send some ideas my way.

Current applications:

North Slope Heavy Machine Opperator
2 weeks on 2 weeks off 12hour days $35 an hour plus benefits, flights, room and board all in Prudohe Bay Alaska! Not sure about this one but why not?!

Deck Hand on Sailboat
Several months and thousands of miles of sailing on a medium size ship for no pay but think about the stories!

My life as a deckhand

I feel a special kinship to the seagulls that feed at the edge of the water on halibut carcasses left by successful fishermen. Like them, I feed off of others leavings, both figuratively and literally. When a sandwich, soggy with day long perspiration is found wedged between seat cushions my heart palpitates, a half eaten bag of Doritos tossed into the trash makes my mouth water. I am the omnivore of dirt bag fishermen. It has (no joke) become a game to see how long I can live off of scraps without buying food, four days and going strong. I am however going 7 days of cleaning fish and busting ass for 8-12 hours a day without showering, I no longer smell myself but I do worry about attracting bears.

I smell and am not really making much money but I am feeling really good about it. I am not rich in money but I am earning dividends on experiences. It feels good to lean and do something new and different even if it is just working on a fishing boat. Now the real question is how do I keep doing this (working and learning new things) for years to come or the even more difficult to figure out question is how do I stop and re-enter the real world.