amw

It occurred to me the other day that perhaps this sickness i've been suffering from for almost five weeks now wasn't an accident. When i visited the doctor a week or two back he just said "upper respiratory infection" and told me to wait it out. I've still got a runny nose and a cough that won't quit, but at least i can breathe and swallow again. I guess i could probably head back to the gym next week, but i'm feeling reluctant. For a while this week i was beating myself up over it, accusing myself of slacking off, but then it struck me... Fuck, the last few weeks have been alright. I've been watching TV, reading books, spending time with my wife, doing all kinds of things that are purely for fun that i didn't have time for when i was doing Spanish and drumming and going to the gym and getting all so involved these activities that really drained me. Maybe i just reached my breaking point and my body gave up for a while. Perhaps getting sick was just meant to be, to give me some perspective.

Two weeks ago the doctor suggested i try going off Zyprexa for a while and it's worked miracles for my sleeping patterns. I can actually get up in the morning now. I'm being productive during the day and easily have time left over after i work without scrambling for it. I'm still not really enjoying my job, but i'm not struggling with it any more. I'm limited to 15 hours per week because that's all my employer can afford (she's self-funding the start-up), and that's barely enough to live off. For a while i couldn't work more than that anyway, but now i can and it's got me thinking about what i want to do with the time. Do i want to look for additional contract work? I don't really want to leave the start-up to go work full-time somewhere else. Maybe this is the perfect opportunity for me to go back and study something part-time?

Studying scares me, because i'd want to study something in the humanities or social sciences, and those paths don't exactly lead to stellar job prospects. It'd kill me to spend a few years picking up additional undergrad units and then doing a Masters only to have to fall back to programming to pay off my student loan anyway. On the other hand, i could just hover in programming, hope the start-up takes off and head back to the career path i had in Australia of earning great money as an engineer. Fuck, i don't know.

What i do know is that i don't think i can go back to everything i was doing a few months ago. Boxing... it was like a job to me, i worked really hard at it - and teaching classes even more so. If it's not a career path for me then why put in so much effort? It was supposed to just be for fun, right? It wasn't supposed to be making it harder for me to work and live and love and do all the other things in my life. I think i need to take a really hard look at whatever else i choose to do besides my job and make sure i don't lose these moments that i've gained back the last few weeks. Whatever i do i have to do because i really want to do it, the sacrifices have to be for something, you know, otherwise what's the point?