On Caring For Your Camel

A couple of months ago I did something that I’m not overly proud of. Late one night I was sitting at my desk mentally preparing myself for another frustrating night of arguing with others over objectives that weren’t being completed properly (or at all), redoing shoddy work, and being sent hither and yon to do Bob knows what, when all I wanted to do was the task that I had signed up for. Sadly, although it may sound like it, I was not in queue for another pick up game for League of Legends, I was at work. My metaphorical work camel, lets call him Abednego, had a load full of straw and after the word came down from the boss-man containing yet another piece I took a look at Abednego and his dark circled eyes, wobbly knees and quaking back and decided I’d had enough. I counted to ten. I packed up my tools. I took a deep breath. I counted to ten again. And I left.

Now the details aren’t important. It doesn’t matter where I worked or what the final disagreement was about. Suffice it to say that it was a silly argument and it was a silly place (yes I worked in Camelot) and Abednego and I had been unhappy there for a long time. I don’t regret the decision to leave, I’m just slightly disappointed in myself for not doing it in a “professional” way. To be honest, I had never considered myself capable of just walking away from a job that I had held for almost 7 years, but I guess we’re learning new things about ourselves all the time. I’ve always said of myself that I will pretty much put up with any amount of bovine effluvia, until I won’t.

So I got home and unloaded poor Abednego before the PETA folks came by with their red paint and sat down to do a spot of thinking about what I was going to do next. Now, if there is one thing I can do, its a spot of thinking. I can brew up a pot of tea, curl myself up in a quilt and dwell on the nuances of life with the best of them. I had lots of options and because I’m a pathological saver, I had some money squirrelled away in the bank. I could get another job that wouldn’t mean a hill of beans to me. I could go to collage to become an Environmental Civil Engineer or some other vaguely cool and interesting sounding collagey type job. I could run away and join the circus. It was at this time that Abednego let forth an awful jet of camel spit into his custom Legolas spittoon. Valid point. No dude, you’re totally right I should finish that degree I started before “Camelot” distracted me with wads of cash.

To be serious for a second; going back to school at 32 absolutely terrifies me. What if I’m too old? Too dumb? What if everything will be too hard? What if they won’t even take me back? I didn’t leave school because I had bad grades, or couldn’t do the work. I was a good student. I left because I felt overwhelmed, ran out of money, was sick of being poor and wanted to work. I then made what almost everyone I knew at the time considered to be a “bad choice.” I would claim that I made the only choice I possibly could have made being that me at that time. By and large I think that I’ve done right by it. I didn’t see the value of putting myself through so much stress for something I wasn’t sure I would even use. Instead I wanted to get a job and trade all my stress for something I thought I could use: money. I don’t regret leaving. As I rule I make an effort to regret as little as humanly possible. Looking at my life now, I have decided the time has come to go back. But what has changed, can I go back? Or, is it too late?

Lets get back to these doubts I’ve been piling up in the previous paragraph. Ze Frank once called these kinds of doubts “too-toos” and he had some advice for dealing with them: “If I catch myself wearing a too-too…let me shake it off like a donkey would shake off something it didn’t like.” This is then followed by bearing ones teeth slightly, shaking of the head suddenly, and making a noise that very well could be a donkey. A donkey is close enough to a camel for me. So what has changed? To be honest I don’t really know. The idea of finishing my degree may actually be scarier now than it was then. I haven’t written a paper in years, and I haven’t painted in just as long. I feel my brain is rusty and stiff. Everyone there will be so much younger than me, and I won’t know any of them. In a small faculty like Fine Arts that could be the most intimidating part. Also I am still fairly sure I won’t use this degree to specifically do anything. I think that sometimes you just have to finish the things that you start. I think that being back at school will help get my creative juices going and get me thinking about what kind of work I want to do and what kind of camel I want Abednego to be. At worst the degree will make a great camel blanket.

And what of my metaphorical work camel? Well maybe I’m just being a smart ass and maybe it’s just a way I have of thinking about the kind of work that I want to do and how I feel about it. More than anything I like the work that I do to mean something. At my old job I could do the work well, and solve problems, but I always felt like I was under this bureaucratic weight of a large company where I had zero impact. I always felt like I wanted to work in a different sort of place. I want more choice, and more choice often requires some education. I’m 32 years old and I have no idea what I want to do with my life, but I do know that I want to be proud of it. Fear or no, school is the first step in that direction.