Status Report, Mr Sulu
In June 2005, I finished high school. I worked that summer for a greenhouse while living at my parents in Maine. The fall and winter were spent living at my parents house, staying up until 8 in the morning, watching large amounts of Star Trek, and half-heartedly job-hunting. My mother decided it would be worthwhile to arrange something for me to do, so she took me to WMSJ, local christian (sorry, "positive music") radio station to see what sorts of things I could help out with around there. It was a smart move, given my proclivities towards audio technology. I started working there, for no money, for approximately 9 - 15 hours a week.
My unpaid internship continued on, and on. More than once I wondered about asking for money, but the station's budget was very tight, and the people who were getting paid weren't getting paid much, and needed what they did get. So I continued on as a volunteer. At the same time, there was a tension mounting in my heart. Part of it was from the outside, but part of it was from the inside. When someone, anyone asked, "What are you doing?", my answer could be, at most, "I'm working 12 hours a week for no money, living at my parents house, and I don't have a license, or plans to go to college." This failed to impress most people (or any people), and while the love of impressing people should not be the driving force in one's life, I slowly realized that I was entirely failing to impress myself.
As the months rolled on, I did look for work here and there. But it was difficult to do so without owning a car, as getting to work would also be. One cannot afford to drive around if one has no job, and one can not live in the woods and work without resigning oneself to farmwork for eternity, or driving. Thus I was at an impasse: Every month, I lost a little more respect for myself as a man, and no forward motion was made towards employment.
Once or twice, I examined options to move to a new town, find a housing buddy, and just work and pay bills. Live in an apartment. The trouble with this idea was that I had no starting capital for such a venture, and I had no buddy with which to do this. Noah and I considered doing this in Georgia, but his parents' prayers about it led them to talk us out of it. Over time, I kept looking for various opportunities, but nothing practical came down the pipe.
In early 2007, I sensed that big changes would come in the fall. There was no certainty, but my intuition said it would happen. Between that and a realization that my pysical needs were small, I began discarding and giving away various possessions. My goal: To be able to carry everything I own, all at the same time.
Didi, a person to whom I was once a close friend, invited me to come down and visit her and her family for July 4th, and for a family retreat her church was holding. It sounded fun to me, so I went. I traveled there with King Dan, who had been in Maine for Katherine's surprise party. He was driving back to Chicago, and we decided together that Virginia was totally on the way. We had a grand old time listening to and critiquing music, talking about life and families, and discussing book ideas. Both of us were and are novelists. He dropped me off at Didi's family's place in the late afternoon. I spent the next week with them, generally visiting and enjoying spending time with people. Well, that's not completely true, but that's a different matter. I ended up staying for two weeks before heading home. Towards the end of the visit, I began talking with Didi about possibly living with her family, helping the family with homeschooling, and whatnot. The really valuable thing about their house was that it was located in Falls Church, within reasonable walking distance to a metro station. This metro could get a person to most points in DC, and many in VA and MD, in under an hour. Dynamite.
Email dialogues were had with Mr and Mrs N. It was around this time (July-ish 2007) that I determined some one-year goals for myself. By July 2008, I said, I wanted to be living in my own place, have some decent savings in the bank, have a car, and have a license. I communicated these goals to them, and we eventually worked out a deal where I could live with them for a low and fair price per month, and I would share a room with some of the boys.
I moved down (carrying all my possessions on my back, by the way) in early September 2007, and found a job in early September 2007. The job, where I am still working, turned out to be a really great job. Good coworkers, good work, good money, good work experience, good management, good commute, and so on. One of the agreements that I had with the N fam was that my staying here was on a three month trial basis. They had never done this sort of thing before. Fair enough, I thought. I worked and worked, got a cell phone, worked some more. I devised a budget (yes, it is indeed a massive spreadsheet. You guessed it.) which would help me plot where my money went. Part of this budget would require me to save enough money to have X amount in the bank by June 2008.
Presently, I am still on my way to meeting that financial goal of having X in savings in the bank. The goal of owning a car has not been pursued, as owning a car in this area would cost far more than it would be worth to me. And thus, having a license has also not been gotten around to. While I have been paying bills and working for a living, I have not been living on what could be called a realistic budget. My rent is too low. It's more of a halfway point between living with my parents, and Real Rent.
Similar to 2007, in early 2008, I had premonitions that things would change in the fall. Since that time, I have determined that I will move out in the summer or fall. The next step in my plan to become a more responsible and experienced man is to move into an apartment and pay realistic bills. Not that I plan to be all high-society and buy a condo in downtown NYC or anything (that wouldn't be realistic, eh?), I still intend to live frugally. My intent is to be independent and responsible for myself, not because I'm a punk who needs to do it on his own, but because I believe financial independence from parents and similar figures would be the right thing to have more experience in.
Unfortunately, this cannot be easily done in proximity to my current job. It is possible that I may be able to find a place with a low enoguh rent, and it might not necessarily be in a high-crime area, and I could probably squeeze along at my current job and pay my bills. But the odds are that such a location would be relatively distant from work (and church!), it would put me no closer to people I love, and the only positive thing it would do is accomplish one of the major goals. It would also prevent my bank accout from growing, slow my spiritual growth, and make me far lonelier than I'd like to be. So, much as I like my current job, I think I need to leave it.
One of the locations which strikes me as an option is something Mainey, like Bath or Brunswick. This would put me in a town I already know, near my family, near some friends (although not too many, really, since they've nearly all moved away), and in a town small enough to provide cheap apartments in decent areas, but large enough to provide more work opportunities than farming and cashiering. Downsides to living in Maine would be that it would be far from my PA friends, and would require less adapting and growing from me than living in an entirely new place. There are some other downsides, but I'm not convinced that they are rational, so I will leave them out for now.
The only other real option that enters my mind is Dubois, PA, a small (and slowly shrinking) town in which live a number of my friends, several of which I'd like to get to know better. It's hard to get to know people if you can only see them 12 days or fewer per year, eh? The population of Dubois is about 8000, I think, and while the town could not be said to be thriving, it is still alive and moving. There are apartments here and there, and job opportunities of several different sorts. There is also PSU DuBois, the local branch of the state college.
I still do not have a degree or major that I would like to pursue, but I do know that I at least want to study and become fluent in Spanish and Arabic. I have a few other various interests which may or may not warrant official classes - we'll see. Schooling could theoretically be done in Maine or Pennsylvania, of course. I think that being able to speak 3 of the top 5 languages in the world (counted by populations who speak X as their primary language) would be useful.
There are people that I'd like to see this summer who live in MA, IL, PA, and ME. I will probably be leaving my job in early July to do a bit of traveling to see various people, but the real question is where I'll be calling home after that.
Actually, there are roughly four Real Questions, and where I'm going to live this fall is but one. But it is one of the simpler questions of the lot. I think I would like to live in DuBois, rent an apartment, work full time (or part time filler, part time careery), and take (or at least audit) a couple classes.
---
Another of the big questions is the ol' "What to do with my life?"
Stephanie N: I'd say to figure out who you want to be, how you want to live, and what brings you deep satisfaction
Stephanie N: then figure out how to fit your life to those things
Talked with Steph about other things, too, but I'll leave those out of this for now.
I do believe that what brings me deep satisfaction is chaos reduction. Vague, eh? I like taking chaos and ordering it. This could mean sorting out a quarrel between people, sorting out laundry, analyzing statistics, figuring out the fastest route between two places, or serving customers.
For as long as I can remember, I enjoyed solving math problems. Later I liked math less, but logic class was totally my favorite. You start with a variable, something unknown and dirty. When you finish, it is complete, unchaotic, with no untidy bits hanging off. Perfect. People, of course, are not like math or logic, but I've been drawn to peacemaking and troubleshooting people for over five years. I try to understand their problems, reconcile them with those with whom they are at conflict, and solve the problems if I can. Sometimes I can't, and all I can do then is just listen - but that's still making them feel better, than thus reducing tension, reducing chaos. If a customer needs something, and I can get it for them, it makes me happy. It's solving a problem. I absolutely love fixing people's tech for them, because I'm making things work better, and I'm solving a problem that the person has. Even if it's as simple as them not having the kind of milk they need - it's still a problem that can be solved. Chaos into order. Teaching and learning are both the changing of confusion into understanding. So is the simple act of trying to understand what someone is going through. System-building of any sort (be it web design, computer programming, producing machinery, language-creation, or forming new methods for getting things done at work) is something which I enjoy to no end.
I'm not sure how to say what brings me deep satisfaction. But problem solving is quite possibly one such thing. On a practical level, this applies to pretty much anything constructive or positive that one can do, so I'm going to refine it and say that I like to fix things, design systems, and I like to help people. One guy I know who had similar things on such a list, he became a physical therapist. Fix things, understand how they work, help people. Perfect. For me? Not likely, but who knows? :P
As far as who I want to be, and how I want to live, those require a bit more thought.
---
Questions and comments appreciated.
My unpaid internship continued on, and on. More than once I wondered about asking for money, but the station's budget was very tight, and the people who were getting paid weren't getting paid much, and needed what they did get. So I continued on as a volunteer. At the same time, there was a tension mounting in my heart. Part of it was from the outside, but part of it was from the inside. When someone, anyone asked, "What are you doing?", my answer could be, at most, "I'm working 12 hours a week for no money, living at my parents house, and I don't have a license, or plans to go to college." This failed to impress most people (or any people), and while the love of impressing people should not be the driving force in one's life, I slowly realized that I was entirely failing to impress myself.
As the months rolled on, I did look for work here and there. But it was difficult to do so without owning a car, as getting to work would also be. One cannot afford to drive around if one has no job, and one can not live in the woods and work without resigning oneself to farmwork for eternity, or driving. Thus I was at an impasse: Every month, I lost a little more respect for myself as a man, and no forward motion was made towards employment.
Once or twice, I examined options to move to a new town, find a housing buddy, and just work and pay bills. Live in an apartment. The trouble with this idea was that I had no starting capital for such a venture, and I had no buddy with which to do this. Noah and I considered doing this in Georgia, but his parents' prayers about it led them to talk us out of it. Over time, I kept looking for various opportunities, but nothing practical came down the pipe.
In early 2007, I sensed that big changes would come in the fall. There was no certainty, but my intuition said it would happen. Between that and a realization that my pysical needs were small, I began discarding and giving away various possessions. My goal: To be able to carry everything I own, all at the same time.
Didi, a person to whom I was once a close friend, invited me to come down and visit her and her family for July 4th, and for a family retreat her church was holding. It sounded fun to me, so I went. I traveled there with King Dan, who had been in Maine for Katherine's surprise party. He was driving back to Chicago, and we decided together that Virginia was totally on the way. We had a grand old time listening to and critiquing music, talking about life and families, and discussing book ideas. Both of us were and are novelists. He dropped me off at Didi's family's place in the late afternoon. I spent the next week with them, generally visiting and enjoying spending time with people. Well, that's not completely true, but that's a different matter. I ended up staying for two weeks before heading home. Towards the end of the visit, I began talking with Didi about possibly living with her family, helping the family with homeschooling, and whatnot. The really valuable thing about their house was that it was located in Falls Church, within reasonable walking distance to a metro station. This metro could get a person to most points in DC, and many in VA and MD, in under an hour. Dynamite.
Email dialogues were had with Mr and Mrs N. It was around this time (July-ish 2007) that I determined some one-year goals for myself. By July 2008, I said, I wanted to be living in my own place, have some decent savings in the bank, have a car, and have a license. I communicated these goals to them, and we eventually worked out a deal where I could live with them for a low and fair price per month, and I would share a room with some of the boys.
I moved down (carrying all my possessions on my back, by the way) in early September 2007, and found a job in early September 2007. The job, where I am still working, turned out to be a really great job. Good coworkers, good work, good money, good work experience, good management, good commute, and so on. One of the agreements that I had with the N fam was that my staying here was on a three month trial basis. They had never done this sort of thing before. Fair enough, I thought. I worked and worked, got a cell phone, worked some more. I devised a budget (yes, it is indeed a massive spreadsheet. You guessed it.) which would help me plot where my money went. Part of this budget would require me to save enough money to have X amount in the bank by June 2008.
Presently, I am still on my way to meeting that financial goal of having X in savings in the bank. The goal of owning a car has not been pursued, as owning a car in this area would cost far more than it would be worth to me. And thus, having a license has also not been gotten around to. While I have been paying bills and working for a living, I have not been living on what could be called a realistic budget. My rent is too low. It's more of a halfway point between living with my parents, and Real Rent.
Similar to 2007, in early 2008, I had premonitions that things would change in the fall. Since that time, I have determined that I will move out in the summer or fall. The next step in my plan to become a more responsible and experienced man is to move into an apartment and pay realistic bills. Not that I plan to be all high-society and buy a condo in downtown NYC or anything (that wouldn't be realistic, eh?), I still intend to live frugally. My intent is to be independent and responsible for myself, not because I'm a punk who needs to do it on his own, but because I believe financial independence from parents and similar figures would be the right thing to have more experience in.
Unfortunately, this cannot be easily done in proximity to my current job. It is possible that I may be able to find a place with a low enoguh rent, and it might not necessarily be in a high-crime area, and I could probably squeeze along at my current job and pay my bills. But the odds are that such a location would be relatively distant from work (and church!), it would put me no closer to people I love, and the only positive thing it would do is accomplish one of the major goals. It would also prevent my bank accout from growing, slow my spiritual growth, and make me far lonelier than I'd like to be. So, much as I like my current job, I think I need to leave it.
One of the locations which strikes me as an option is something Mainey, like Bath or Brunswick. This would put me in a town I already know, near my family, near some friends (although not too many, really, since they've nearly all moved away), and in a town small enough to provide cheap apartments in decent areas, but large enough to provide more work opportunities than farming and cashiering. Downsides to living in Maine would be that it would be far from my PA friends, and would require less adapting and growing from me than living in an entirely new place. There are some other downsides, but I'm not convinced that they are rational, so I will leave them out for now.
The only other real option that enters my mind is Dubois, PA, a small (and slowly shrinking) town in which live a number of my friends, several of which I'd like to get to know better. It's hard to get to know people if you can only see them 12 days or fewer per year, eh? The population of Dubois is about 8000, I think, and while the town could not be said to be thriving, it is still alive and moving. There are apartments here and there, and job opportunities of several different sorts. There is also PSU DuBois, the local branch of the state college.
I still do not have a degree or major that I would like to pursue, but I do know that I at least want to study and become fluent in Spanish and Arabic. I have a few other various interests which may or may not warrant official classes - we'll see. Schooling could theoretically be done in Maine or Pennsylvania, of course. I think that being able to speak 3 of the top 5 languages in the world (counted by populations who speak X as their primary language) would be useful.
There are people that I'd like to see this summer who live in MA, IL, PA, and ME. I will probably be leaving my job in early July to do a bit of traveling to see various people, but the real question is where I'll be calling home after that.
Actually, there are roughly four Real Questions, and where I'm going to live this fall is but one. But it is one of the simpler questions of the lot. I think I would like to live in DuBois, rent an apartment, work full time (or part time filler, part time careery), and take (or at least audit) a couple classes.
---
Another of the big questions is the ol' "What to do with my life?"
Stephanie N: I'd say to figure out who you want to be, how you want to live, and what brings you deep satisfaction
Stephanie N: then figure out how to fit your life to those things
Talked with Steph about other things, too, but I'll leave those out of this for now.
I do believe that what brings me deep satisfaction is chaos reduction. Vague, eh? I like taking chaos and ordering it. This could mean sorting out a quarrel between people, sorting out laundry, analyzing statistics, figuring out the fastest route between two places, or serving customers.
For as long as I can remember, I enjoyed solving math problems. Later I liked math less, but logic class was totally my favorite. You start with a variable, something unknown and dirty. When you finish, it is complete, unchaotic, with no untidy bits hanging off. Perfect. People, of course, are not like math or logic, but I've been drawn to peacemaking and troubleshooting people for over five years. I try to understand their problems, reconcile them with those with whom they are at conflict, and solve the problems if I can. Sometimes I can't, and all I can do then is just listen - but that's still making them feel better, than thus reducing tension, reducing chaos. If a customer needs something, and I can get it for them, it makes me happy. It's solving a problem. I absolutely love fixing people's tech for them, because I'm making things work better, and I'm solving a problem that the person has. Even if it's as simple as them not having the kind of milk they need - it's still a problem that can be solved. Chaos into order. Teaching and learning are both the changing of confusion into understanding. So is the simple act of trying to understand what someone is going through. System-building of any sort (be it web design, computer programming, producing machinery, language-creation, or forming new methods for getting things done at work) is something which I enjoy to no end.
I'm not sure how to say what brings me deep satisfaction. But problem solving is quite possibly one such thing. On a practical level, this applies to pretty much anything constructive or positive that one can do, so I'm going to refine it and say that I like to fix things, design systems, and I like to help people. One guy I know who had similar things on such a list, he became a physical therapist. Fix things, understand how they work, help people. Perfect. For me? Not likely, but who knows? :P
As far as who I want to be, and how I want to live, those require a bit more thought.
---
Questions and comments appreciated.