I'm Back

Sorry friends for not posting for about ... 2 years. Much has happened that I need to tell you about, like [holy shit] I quit my job and got married!

So. What happened with the job? Well, first, you should know that I didn't just quit my job. I'm now in month 7 of a 12-month break from working. So it might be more accurate to say that I quit my career path/social trajectory as a seemingly successful person.

I think it was combination of burn out from 4 years of Doing-Business-In-China hard labor, the job somehow morphing from an adventure into endless/pointless Power Points and endless/pointless meetings, being no longer willing to make the kind of sacrifices (to my health, sanity and personal life) demanded by the job, having lost any semblance of ambition, and finally realizing after 15 years that corporate lawyering with limbs attached to a computer and phone for 12 hours a day under white polystyrene suspended ceiling tiles and fluorescent tubes is not only a meaningless pursuit but also a soul sucking one – I got to the point where I thought to myself, as Milan Kundera puts it, life is elsewhere.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have felt this way. Sometimes I think to myself: what I went through is what 99% of other white collar workers go through and they keep at it, and 99% of Chinese laborers would kill to suffer those same paper cuts, so why am I so damned special? Am I just a lazy ass punk who reads too much Milan Kundera? (Well ok I used to read a lot of Milan Kundera but stopped about 15 years ago because it got boring, but you know what I'm trying to say.) Shouldn't I just keep showing up at the office, collect generous paychecks, drink compulsively and/or smoke compulsively and/or reach for another shrink-wrapped bag of highly processed highly sugar'd pre-packaged semi-food and/or buy something/anything (especially things coveted by other seemingly successful people) to make myself feel better, whenever nausea/doubt creeps in about how I'm spending 80% of what remains of my waking life?

I don't really know how to answer that. And maybe my recent marriage and attendant adult responsibilities will eventually change how I answer that. But for now, I say, Fuck That!

So. What's up with me getting married? That's for another post, coming soon.