My Own Ramblings About Life

[PocketAces]

Thanks for reading or at least, thanks to the site for having a forum to rant on. Where to begin.

 

Ever since the New Year, something has changed. I am so discontent with life. I fight off the urges to get drink every night I am off of work. I am surprised that I have been successful. I never used to be successful with stopping my heavy drinking. As of late, I have. For almost 13 years, I ran to a specific religion, a specific belief of a empowering God guiding our life. While I do not feel more enlightened than anyone else, I do feel enlightened, now that I am atheist.

 

The thing is, the outcome has been both bittersweet. Realization of my existence is excellent, but now, once the paradigms have changed, and everything new begins, I wonder where have I been going? I have held on a job for almost 5 years now. Worked my way up at the company I work for. I once had a love that I stocked all my hopes and dreams in. Now that is over, and I feel like, when the paradigms change, when life changes, when you lose certain things, it is like you go through another stage of "enlightenment", just without the nonsense of religion. That my life has been built on nothingness.

 

Thankfully the company I work for, gives us 3 days of personal days, as well as vacation days. So I burned up a personal day tonight. Not feeling well mentally to work 12 hours on machinery, and not feeling physically well either. Either due to my nerves, or due to some health issues that are almost completed. I have decided to go back to school. Looking at the college I once attended to. Finish my education where I started it, and start over, completely new.

 

It makes me nervous. Starting over means, giving up everything I have worked for, to go after something else. Possibly having to move away from where I have grown a liking to. I have been away from my family for quite some time. My family is a distant family but we're all still close. So family is not the hugest concern, sadly enough. I just look back and see that, I have worked so hard, for roughly 5 years, to get where I am. It is nothing of greatness, but it is something I'm dam proud of. I just don't know why now, it is not good enough. I cannot blame depression, loss of faith, loss of my engagement on the way I feel. I've hidden these feelings for several years now. Almost like giving up hope for something better, to be complacent with what you have now because at least you have something. It is just weird how, what you have, is something you want to let go of to find something better. I do not come from a rich family. There will be no handouts. It means getting back into debt, to be happy. Odd irony of life I suppose. I just feel like I am at a point that now, more than ever, I wish it was starting tomorrow.

 

So I hope tonight, as I take my medicine, antibiotics for some teeth issues I have, and start cleaning up everything in my apartment, and eat a good meal, that at least I can get my mind mentally clear, for the next few months. The start of it is what I am meaning. I am finding out what I need to do, and I need to be patient. I remind myself this all the time now. Just be patient and keep everything up. I just wish I knew why, after all these years, I have come to this place. It is not bad. It is just weird I suppose. I remember years ago, I had so much hope for the life I have now. I thought, what I do now, will be a pivatol instrument to get the person that I used to love, that it would lead her and I together. Then that ended. So I thought, ok, this life will get me what I want. Now, 2009 has come, and I am just so fed up with everything. It seems all these years, I have established my life under false pretenses. Now that the false pretenses are all gone, what is left? I feel like nothing is left, and I suppose that is the problem that now I feel like I am facing. A life built upon false pretenses, always leads to a closure.

 

So I hope the next month will establish my first real shot at changing my life, with the foundation built on the real, and no more false pretenses. I will be giving my 110 percent in doing the best I can. The outcome I will never know till the outcome is here. People have told me, that I could do schooling online. I have considered that. They don't realize the problem isn't just that I am doing something that I want to stop doing and I want to go after something better, more in line with what I want to do. That is half of it. The other half of it is, I want a new life. A different life. A better life, and I am not saying my life is bad right now. It isn't. I have a good life, and nothing is really wrong. So I hope no one sees me as being apathetic here. It is just odd how sometimes we come to a point in our life, when we grow in ourselves, change in ourselves, the good things we have just aren't enough anymore. It is easy to say bad things aren't good enough, but to say that good things aren't enough, for me, leads me to believe, that at least for myself, I need to radically change my life. Radically change things beyond mental beliefs, or ideas. Like I told my ex about this, for we have both told each other things new going in our lives that we know the only people that would know how important it is are each other, I told her, that I have changed so much with my beliefs. Each day goes, and my new found atheism, just gets stronger and stronger, to where I am sure I could be coined in with the cliched, "fundamentalist, militant atheists" now. So beliefs in the mind have changed, and how I perceive life has changed. It is time that I live it out. Realizing my mortality and my existence has been the most therapeutic thing I could ever imagine. You think about your own existence and mortality and then everything in general comes into perspective and when the image you see, is one that you are not happy with anymore, it seems you begin to realize, you need to change more than just your beliefs. Of course I am only speaking of myself here, and in no way making a broad generalization.

 

So I hope that the next few months, I find the quickest, most realistic way to get what I want. Like I said, I will do my all to get it, and I'm convinced I'll get it, regardless of how the details will be. Thanks for reading, feel free to reply in any way.

[Amethyst]

*Hugs*

 

I too, have decided to go back to school and pursue an IT degree, because I am fed up with crappy temporary office jobs that often pay low and that I am usually not well-suited for.

 

My parents believe that it's impossible to find an enjoyable job and that you should just tolerate what you have until you retire, and then enjoy life. I strongly disagree with that sentiment. Life is far too short to be miserable for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week because the job you have is not a good fit.

 

This is, most likely, the only life we will ever get. Best to find something enjoyable.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I know a few people, including myself, that are going through a lot of re-examination of life. I'd love to have a better job, but then again I'm seeing layoffs in the thousands locally and elsewhere. I'd love to have more fun, but we need to watch expenses (I'm reading a lot more now since it's cheap). So I put up with the duldrums and keep on doing what is keeping a roof over our heads and food in the fridge. I'd love to get some new job training, but that will have to wait since the job won't pay for it and I can't afford it. But I feel a lot of what you do. The dissatisfaction, the itching to do something totally different, to meet more people with similar values and outlook (since the Christians just don't and won't understand the changes).

 

Something I'm doing in my spare time is trying to become an un-evangelist. I'm pondering the best approaches for drawing out the believers that I currently know, who as yet do not know of my de-conversion. It gives me the opportunity to engage my mind in seeing contradictions that I used to glaze over, while at the same time trying to determine how to present the thoughts as questions to draw out those that are still entrenched.

[Kathlene]

Pocket Aces, I identified so much with your post. A lot of the things you feel struck a chord in me and my own life. It is so hard isn't it to have the xtian mind lifted from your brain and realise how many wasted years there were. I am excited for you. You sound like you are discovering yourself and perhaps some hidden desires that you stuffed down whilst you were a xtian that are now coming out. I totally understand the notion of wanting something new, and going for it. If this is something you want badly, go for it, despite the struggles. They will work themselves out as you plunge forward. It sounds like you are breaking free and forging new paths with your new brain. This site is a great place to vent and work things out in your head and get encouragement from others who are going through similar processess. Good on you!! All the best with it. Cheers.

[deb]

It is just odd how sometimes we come to a point in our life, when we grow in ourselves, change in ourselves, the good things we have just aren't enough anymore.

 

This is a great description of my life recently too. I think it's awesome you are forging out into the unknown, just following your desires even though you're not quite sure where you'll end up. Isn't that what life should be about? Risking things, trying new ideas, even though you have no idea how they'll turn out?

 

I ended a relationship recently that had many good qualities...and I've had to even question myself about whether I should just have overlooked some things and enjoyed the good. But ultimately I came to the point where I needed to take care of me for awhile...have myself and my kids be my priority. Not have maintaining a relationship with him be my goal. It's been equal parts miserable and exhilarating. I am still workin through things, but the further along I get, the more sure I am I made the right decision. And if nothing else, I am proving to myself that I CAN be alone and thrive. I want to live out the fact that I do not need a partner to be a complete person. Which is basically how I've felt since I married at 19 years old.

 

So...hurrah for you! Keep plugging along and enjoy the new things about every day. Walk thru the bad and know that more good is on it's way

 

Deb