What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I know that Nietzsche is a bit tired and clichéd, so I'll expand upon this in my own words. The act of physical exertion actively results in the wears down and weakens our muscles, however, as a reaction to this, new muscle tissue is formed to reinforce the limbs, making them stronger and more resilient than they were before, allowing for it to handle even more strenuous tasks. In the same way, going through difficult times life makes you better able to cope with bigger storms down the road. I would not be able to share this story two years ago. While I'm still in some ways recovering from that year, and at the same time that I'm trying to recover, I am having to confront new problems. Even as I am rebuilding myself, it feels as if I'm finding new parts of my mind that are broken and require fixing.
2014 began with what felt like a miracle of grace. The morning of the big meeting between my parents and a representative of the painting company that would decide my fate for this year, I visited my family doctor at the request of my parents. Telling him about my present situation, he asked me about my feelings. I believed myself fine at the time, but answered his questions honestly. After his series of questions, he informed me that I was suffering from a more severe depression than I had believed. He agreed with my parents that a second year attempting to run a business would be extremely bad for me psychologically, and wrote a note to confirm it. With the meeting a few hours before the meeting, I spent roughly two of them in heavy prayer, begging God to let this conflict end in this meeting. I was terrified that the meeting would result in an extensive legal dispute that would carry on for months, didn't think I could handle the idea of bringing that upon my family. I just wanted things to end there. I needed peace. I needed freedom. Returning to my metaphorical pit, I couldn't climb while I was still chained to the floor.
When the meeting finally came, everything was fairly pleasant. The representative of the company was very polite throughout the meeting. I still think he believed that he could make my next year turn out better. He had reevaluated some of the events of my last year, finding some areas where the company hadn't helped me as much as they should have and had made some efforts to make amends for those mistakes. When he saw the note from the doctor, however, he finally realized that I was in no state to carry on another year with them. He quickly apologized to all of us, promising that my 2014 contract would be terminated immediately, with no further expense to me, and that I would be reimbursed for the insurance charges. I was shocked with what to my mind seemed to be the least likely turn of events. My prayers had been answered, and I had been set free. I finally felt like I could find my way back out of the pit.
My family also decided that I should really spend a semester back at UFV, and helped me pay for a couple courses to help me build myself back up. I remember for the next couple weeks after being released from my contract, I was constantly expressing the the joyful sensation of relief.
Following the semester, I decided to get back to working as a painter for another company. I ended up getting a position as a crew chief from the person who replaced me in running the student painting company. He had no prior painting experience, but as a business student, I figured that with my help he would be able to succeed where I had failed. As it was though, I came to the realization pretty quickly that in my current place in life, I needed to be working with a company that I could learn from, and as much as I wanted to help him, I was found that I was watching my previous year all over again, just from an external perspective, and I wasn't prepared to deal with that. I gave my boss two weeks notice, and promised to give him as much assistance and advice as I could in that time. Still, as the two weeks went on, I became increasingly frustrated with how many things that the parent company hadn't told him about, and he would have never thought to ask. Finally the last straw came with a job two days before the end of my two weeks where we absolutely needed fall protection, and my employer's manager insisted that it wasn't necessary when I, the other painter, and even the client insisted that it was. Rather than break my neck because of the district manager's lack of appropriate concern, I told my manager that I had enough of his manager's [CENSORED] and that I wasn't going to work another day if I was going to be put into a situation guaranteed to land me in the hospital. I followed up with an email reiterating that it was nothing about him personally, but more of a general lack of confidence in the person working above him. He was surprisingly understanding of my position, despite being distraught over seeing me go, as it left him in severe demand of painters.
Following that, I began working for a different company run by painters who started off running a painting franchisesinilar to the one I owned, before deciding to start an independent business of their own. Working with them, I found myself learning a lot of better techniques, and after the first couple weeks, I had built a solid reputation with my employers for my professional workplace attitude, and willingness to take on new challenges and handle complications without a negative attitude.
Still, after only a month of working with them, I had an accident while working, and ended up breaking my left ankle. At first I believed it wasn't a serious injury, insisting that I had merely gotten the wind knocked out of me, and should be able to get back up after a short rest. The other painter, as well as my employer felt otherwise, and insisted that I go to a hospital. Since the pain and swelling was increasing, I eventually agreed, still feeling good enough to use my less injured right leg to drive myself to the hospital. Turns out it was worse than I had thought, and I have now spent ten weeks recovering. On the bright side, with it being a work related injury, I have been given financial compensation for the lost wages so where last year, I was working hard and losing money, this year I am doing nothing and still making money. It has been irritating to me, however, as I would be making more if I was in the work force, but am at present still unable to return. To make matters worse, now that I am past a 10 week mark, my wage loss is being readjusted based on my income over the past year, effectively cutting my weekly income in half. (Thank you again 2013...)
I like video games. You can learn a lot from them. They allow you to explore and learn how to overcome situations that you haven't yet in real life. In a way, they can teach you the value of perseverance and creativity in overcoming difficult situations. One of the things other things I like is that they typically give you freedom to save, load, or even start over fresh when you find yourself failing. This is a feature, that is unfortunately missing in real life. When you experience heavy losses, you can't just go back a year to your last auto-save. Your problems aren't going to go away. They are just going to get worse until you deal with them. Recently I've been having trouble dealing with that. When you find yourself in a situation like mine, it becomes easy to hide in the forgiving world of video games, where you can freely fix your past mistakes before you make them, or at the very least, start over with a clean slate as many times as you like.
When the world seems to be constantly beating you down, it's easy to retreat into video games. I'm not saying at all that video games are evil, but I'm realizing that even in my current condition, rather than retreating from the world until my injuries have healed, I need to set real world ambitions for myself.
I've been recently having difficulties in finding ambition. I'm having to overcome my fear of pursuing goals in my life. It's difficult, considering that it's easy to feel like most of my pursuits have ended in failure. I'm afraid that I've become destined to be one of those starving artists, who are too overwhelmed by the struggle to cope with their psychological issues to be able to actually survive. My future seems uncertain at the moment, but I am realizing that waiting for life to get better isn't enough. I need to take action now in order to get through this.
So, I've been having to reevaluate my options, and strangely enough, It seems that right now, the place for me to be right now is back into full time schooling at UFV. I've fortunately been able to get into enough courses that will all work towards my eventual graduation, and provide me with the right environment, support, and education to pursue goals and ambitions that I had thought to be too distant to even think of. There is still some uncertainty, and I know it won't be a walk in the park, but I have faith that this is what I should be doing this Fall.
Thank you to anyone who cared enough to bear with me on this journey of mine, either through reading this blog or in real life. Just being able to tell this story up to present day feels like I've managed to recover some of the ambition that I lost sometime in the past two years. I am hoping that I will continue with this blog, as it feels like it represents the enthusiasm that I had back in 2012 for everything that was going on at the time. If you found this story too dull and depressing to read, I hope you will find what will is to come more fascinating.
Looking foreward to Fall 2014!
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