enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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I really get it now.

So I'm having an interesting moment.

I enjoyed last evening - going out and pretending I realize now as though I was traveling. I was out and about and reading and thinking. I wasn't in the least bit interested in what anyone there thought of me sitting alone, whether anyone was noticing me.

I feel sorry for people who look at me when I am alone and think that they wouldn't want to be alone. Being alone, under one's own steam is...great. I wouldn't have wanted to make the effort to carry on a conversation with someone else last night, wouldn't have wanted my reverie to be interrupted.

So I am very tired today, but this is not bad. I found a blog by an American woman who moved to Florence - through a long trajectory of events, so it's not exactly a model for me to follow, but it got me thinking - and I was up really late last night reading it. :)

It got me thinking that I've been so trapped for so long thinking that what everyone else does must be the best way and therefore it must be the way for me.

I want to change my life radically. I hate my career. I can't do it for twenty plus more years just so that I will have a comfortable pension and be able to sit in a little house in a garden doing...what, exactly?

I really don't want to be my mother. Not to disparage her but really the life I am living is the one that she wanted for me.

It is not the life for me.

So I realize that I need to make a plan. I need to figure out how to move to Europe or, hell, anywhere else, if only for a year or so to try it out.

Soo...a few things need to be done. I could, of course, get permission to take a year's leave from my job. That would be one option.

I want more radical change than this, of course, but that will take time. I'm not sure what else I'll be able to do for a living, and how much creative stuff I'm going to be able to do.

I do know one thing, however, and that is that I need to make more money. I took this abusive bottom-of-the-totem-pole job at which I have to be screwed around by that idiot senior economist, simply because it's a prestigious job with no guarantees that I'd ever have an opportunity again. I thought that I wanted to build a career there.

It turns out that I don't actually want that. I have no desire to have a career there. In fact, that would be equivalent to giving in to fear, to becoming something that I have learned I *should* become, rather than what I am. And that would be cheating everyone in the entire world, because I can't really be any good for the world unless I live fully and with joy. I can't do that in this job. I can't do it.

So, the first step is going to be to go on the government jobs website tomorrow and start applying for competitions for more highly paid jobs. I am qualified for many. I will find a more highly paid job with more creativity involved. I will do good work, get promoted, take control, make money.

All the while I will go back to Florence each year and take art courses and maybe other courses - who knows - and figure out what my market niche will be, how I will move. I will figure it out.

I have realized something really important in the last twelve hours, even the last three hours. It is that I'm so stupid.

I'm stupid because I always see what other people do and that I'd also like to do - such as move to Florence, for example - and think first of all the reasons why I can't be her - I don't have as practical and portable an occupation and experience (web design, database development).

I always go through all of the reasons why I CAN'T do something.

But I always forget the most important thing: I am me. I have always once I've set my mind to something been able to achieve things to some degree. I have a really good brain. I'm also not unattractive, which, matched with a really good brain and life experience and communication skills and dignity and integrity that get me noticed and social ease (when I choose :)) can take one a REALLY, REALLY long way. Hell, I can even speak French much better than I let on. If I actually applied myself I could be fluent. Which means also that I could learn Italian. I am quite sure.

In other words, I have EVERYTHING sitting in my lap. I could do anything, make anything work. I am one of the privileged people of the world. And if I fail in one way or another I can come back to Canada and I can get a job and I can work hard and I can make do with very little. I am smart and I am efficient and I am frugal and I need very little to be happy. What I do need is beauty and intellectual challenge and laughter and words and empathy. And thank god that those things are cheap.

In fact, they cost nothing if you have the eyes and heart to find them.

I've just never understood this before. I can do anything. I can do anything.

I'm going to go for a walk to the market right now. I'm wearing my yellow daffodil dress. I'm going to go and register for my July drawing course. And then I'm going to read or write in my diary or do some sketching. And tomorrow I'm going to take the bull by the horns and find a job and a salary and the respect that I deserve. I am not going to sit around with that stupid, stupid senior economist belittling and offending and disgusting me for more than a matter of weeks, and being underpaid whilst doing it.

12:12 p.m. - 2008-06-15

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