Anywhere There's Oxygen

A silly video for Phantom Buffalo's "Anywhere There's Oxygen"

 Today we think our car got towed for unpaid parking tickets and our savings are temporarily depleted because we made an investment in a really great piece of recording equipment and haven't yet sold the other equipment that will pay for it and I'm scheduled for some overtime this week but thanks to some one-time unexpected bills, very little of the surplus will end up in savings, most likely.

So I've been thinking of this song by Phantom Buffalo.  It's always been a favorite of mine, and I think there are very few people who can't relate or couldn't at some point relate to the desire to be free of the daily grind, the pressure of the grown up obligation to figure out how to "buy my food and stay alive."

I wrote on this subject fairly recently and mentioned that I was making a move in the direction of leaving my job and moving to something more personally fulfilling, but even those baby steps have been halted having collided head first with the hefty time commitments of working in a seasonal business.  Only a year ago I would likely have folded up in despair and resigned myself to the high probability of being stuck indefinitely, but now that the ol' serotonin's flowing properly I see things in a different light.

In the midst of a particularly stressful and soul-crushing weeks at work recently, I cracked. Sobbing in the bathroom at work cracked.  And after several days of this, I had an epiphany while talking to the lumber delivery driver who's become my friend.  "I'm going to go give my notice for the fall after this boat leaves," I told him.  "Aw shit, girl, good for you.  I wanna do the same thing.  Good luck."  And in a state of total insanity, I did.  I walked into my boss' office just as he was reading a particularly defeated incident report I wrote that concluded, "Obviously I am a bad person," and I told him I was done after Labor Day.  After talking with him about it for a while, I agreed to think about it and I've since rescinded my resignation.  For now.  That I'm on my way out is a "when," not an "if" proposition.

Yes, I was acting rashly in an emotionally charged moment, but it wasn't completely irrational.  Being extremely risk averse I've built up an unreasonably high tolerance for bullshit when the alternative is walking into the unknown.  The safety of a job that pays well and offers health benefits is something I don't take for granted and I've been willing to work around the parts that don't work for me in order to hold onto it.  But I never intended to stay there forever and I know what I'd rather be doing.  So no, I'm not going to storm out the door in a fit of pique with nothing lined up, but I am going to have to make a bold move and possibly a leap of faith.

In our household we're at a crossroads where we're confident in our strengths and eager to put them into service.  We can easily picture a future in which we support ourselves by doing things that are deeply satisfying.  In the short term, though, that requires taking scary and decisive action and doing some serious preparation to put some sort of safety net in place before we throw ourselves into the uncertain future.  On a spaceship built for two going anywhere there's oxygen.