Life Sucks(?)

I have been posturing about this statement for the better part of this year. I see old friends and these are the first words uttered, the people I come across can only see the world as such. To me, this is a call to attention from individuals who have not the experience nor opportunity to go out and make the world their own. To which whey respond, ‘Life sucks’, but further examination reveals that life in fact is neither pleasant nor foul. It is of what we make it. Again, i myself did not believe this.

To further examine this point I turn to my own life for the moment. Externally, one would assess that my life is rich. I’m living on my own, I got a place I call home, good friends, and good times abound. On the contrary, life is hard, so hard in fact that I am more scared and doubtful of my current state of affairs than when I was a stoned and broke undergrad. Instead of saying to others that life sucks, I internalized such thoughts painstakingly and unnecessarily wallowed in self-doubt.

Self-doubt is such a high-level subjective term that I must pinpoint an exact event in which this notion manifests itself. A few months back, I was working for an organization I need not mention by name. Work life got so bad that it affected my self worth and above all my mental state. You see, work was going fine, I had a job in which I looked forward to reporting to, until something that I have never experienced happened. MASSIVE layoffs! Acquisition and merger! Frightened and at a loss to process what the fuck had just happened. I sought out support from my friends, to which they replied, ‘Dude, at least you have a job, and besides you didn’t get laid off, you should be so lucky’ Ok, not particularly the response I was looking for, I turned to my parents for advice. Again, self-doubt was even further fortified with the curt response from mother, ‘Are you sure you can just leave and find something else?’

I was like, ‘WF?!’, rather than offer words of encouragement, I was slapped in the face with a moment of clarity, I was now grown (i am not using the term grown man , because a.) I can barely take care of myself and b.) I am not ready to be for the responsibility of being a man, but i digress). My parents being the stoic figures of old world thinking, thought I was being a being ‘a fucking whiny bitch’, my father in so few words. So this was the turning point in which I saw the light, my folks were actually relating to me as if we were on the same level, equals if you will, and this was when it dawned on me that my reaction to the curt response was in fact my inner child seeking assurance from my guardians. Self-doubt was the only objective term that I could tag on myself.

A few weeks later, work turned from alright to down right bullshit. We merged with a German company, my director at the time left for greener pastures, morale was low and I had no plan as how I would move forward. As the merger progressed, the Germans, began ‘integration’ efforts, by that I mean, ‘hey, give me the passwords and create thorough documentation, and no you will not have access to the system and application that you designed!’ Well the writing was on the wall and the resume was being polished as the days turned to weeks.

How does this correlate the original thought, well, this lead to the fabled ‘job search’, and we all know how encouraging that can be, it’s worse than dating! For one, I am sick of dealing with recruiters who have not my interest at heart, but of their own. Here’s what I think of recruiters, why would I allow C students to place in me in under-paying jobs so they can score their commission, why would I take someone seriously when they expect 7-9 years experience administering Windows2003 server, (hey homeboy did you know that the OS has only been on the market for less than 5?, but I digress.) what the fuck does a windows administrator do anyways? Calling out their bullshit I played along and went to meet some ‘recruiters’, and you should have seen the shit show I encountered, that arrogant prick on the phone stringing together buzz words and shit they read on PC magazine looked like someone I would smoke fucking blunts with not someone who could help advanced my career. So i asked myself, if my resume only garnered the attention of these fucking wastoids then I must not have the requisite skill set for advancement. Again self-doubt reared it’s ugly head into my life.

Then a funny thing happened, beat up by the whole process of job search, I decided to ride out January and cease contact with said recruiters. Unknown that my info was out there I was approached by an actual HR employee of an organization. Scheduled phone interview with hiring directory, my mental state was that I was not currently looking for a job and that the current opportunity was something a few notches above my skill level. Reflecting back on this experience I now see how self-doubt could have prevented me from going for the win, so to speak.

As I aced the phone interview armed with little other than my personality and wits, I was invited to an actual face to face meeting. Brimming with confidence I approached the interview process with less calculation and more bravado, to which I attribute to my mental state of not expecting much of an outcome. My valuation of the situation was that if I had any self-doubt going in I was going to at least attempt to counter that with my inherent talent and skill to which I can tactfully bullshit and talk sauce with the best of them but with some humility.

A few days later, I received a great job offer, I had earned it completely on my own and of my on volition. And the only person doubting me is myself so fuck the haters. To come to this realization was the defining moment of my life up until this point, LIFE is Good.