This Is What Living Feels Like

By On June 30, 2009 · 3 Comments

So, if you read this blog at all you know I have worked in IT and IT pro­ject man­age­ment, and volun­teer for the Queer Up North fest­ival each year. what I don’t think I’ve men­tioned much is that over the past couple of years I’ve become stead­ily more dis­sat­is­fied with work­ing in IT, and have been look­ing for some­thing else. Unfor­tu­nately, I’ve never worked out exactly what else I’d be happy with.

I think I’ve worked it out now, though. The title of this post is a lyric from Pic­ture of a Man by one of the artists at the fest­ival, this year: Our Lady J. When I heard it this year, a shiver ran down my spine:

But it is here among the dead that I find life,
And it is here in the ashes that I find where I am going —
And it is here, and it is simple, and it is old and it is right.
It is here that I find —
This is what liv­ing feels like.

Work­ing at Queer Up North I felt alive. Rushed off my feet, for sure, but alive, know­ing I was work­ing with a group of like-minded people help­ing cre­ate some­thing that simply wouldn’t exist had we not done it. It was exhaust­ing: the shortest day was eleven hours, the longest nine­teen. I saw my house each day to grab a cof­fee and shower, then grab a clean shirt in the even­ing. And I loved every minute of it.

And whilst doing all of this: I had a thought. My organ­isa­tional, pro­ject man­age­ment and busi­ness man­age­ment skills are trans­fer­able. What (apart from fear of change) is stop­ping me?

So I’ve decided — noth­ing. Enough with the IT. Time for some­thing that I can be happy doing. OK, it’s going to be a com­prom­ise on the income front. But money shouldn’t be the only reason I do what I do. This is going to mean quite a few changes and dis­rup­tion. I don’t know where it’s going to go. I have no real plan at the moment.

But what I do know is it’s time for a change. Because I like what liv­ing feels like.

 
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3 Responses to This Is What Living Feels Like

  1. ramtops says:
    June 30, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    A Good Plan, I think. You know where we are if we can help!

    xx

  2. Guy says:
    June 30, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    Well done you, and go for it. “The only things you can take with you when your life is over, are the things you put into life. Noth­ing that any­body gave you, includ­ing the Gods, can be taken. But the bright jew­els that you made and threw into the dark­ness; they will light you on that path.“
    Some­thing I got from Shimbo of Dark­tree, Shrug­ger of Thun­ders. And from Everyman.

    For me, it’s one of the tra­gedies of the world that IT, which looked like it would be the best job of all, has turned into just another ghetto for people who aren’t ath­letes or beauty stars. We’re just back­ground grunts, tech­ies, whose judge­ment is dis­reg­arded, whose wis­dom is ignored or derided, and whose con­tri­bu­tion to the world is rejected.

    Get out. Do some­thing you enjoy, and put some­thing into the world. Well done, you!

  3. Graham says:
    June 30, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    I’m only a bit ahead of you. I think I’m fairly good with people so I’ve been try­ing to work stuff around that.

    This year will be my second doing artist liaison at a fest­ival over the August BH — think your time at QuN but without the going home in between. And I did another one in the spring which I’m hop­ing to repeat next year. I got that from talk­ing to people at the August event. Did you get to do much net­work­ing amongst the organ­isers at QuN? Do they work on any­thing else sim­ilar?
    This week­end I’m work­ing at Wire­less 2009 in Hyde Park but since I got my SIA Door Super­visor (DS) licence last year this one I’ll be get­ting paid for (prob­ably guard­ing the toi­lets or some­thing since it’s the first job I’ve done with this com­pany).
    Tomor­row night I’m doing a “micro-teach”, the present­a­tion of which com­pletes my City & Guilds 7303 — Pre­par­ing to Teach in the Lifelong Learn­ing Sec­tor (known as “petals” for short), so I can try and get back in to a bit of train­ing, pos­sibly includ­ing with the train­ing com­pany I did my DS course with — more net­work­ing.
    I have an enhanced CRB check in pro­gress so I can try becom­ing a driv­ing instructor.
    And so on.

    Two things I hope might be worth tak­ing away from all that. Net­work like crazy and diver­sify. Good luck!

    (Still think you should open a Sugar Shop fran­chise though. The end res­ult might not be your thing but I reckon you’re in the right place for it.)