Lost

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Apologies if this post is a little ramble-y. It’s here pretty much as it came out of my brain.

I’ve officially been unemployed for too long. The days have started blurring together. I have volunteering, so I’m not completely without structure. I have something to do on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at set times. I have a carpool schedule with Peter for now, which entails leaving the house at a certain time each day. But once that’s done, once I’ve dropped Peter off and/or finished my volunteering hours, I just have a huge stretch sitting in front of me. Time, one of those things I’ve always wanted. And I’m not sure what to do with it.

Part of it is my chronic tiredness, which I believe I’ve mentioned before. I don’t sleep well, especially lately, which makes any downtime I get feel like nap time. Sometimes I resist, sometimes I don’t. Usually, when I don’t, I just feel worse. But that doesn’t stop me from making the choice to “flop down for just a minute,” even though I know how that ends.

It’s not like I don’t have projects I could be working on. My novel rewrite’s coming along well, but it’s not done yet. Which should make it a prime candidate to get done. But I’ve found I’ve gotten weirdly picky about where I work on it. I want to be in the right “mood,” even though I think that mood might just be “oh hey I started writing.” I haven’t figured out how to bootstrap into it.

There’s a bunch of other stuff I’ve thought about, too. Writing a kernel, following a tutorial, just so I can have done it. Trying to contribute to an open source project, which unfortunately would probably involve learning another coding language. (Java, I love you, but the rest of the world just isn’t that into you.) I could try to learn a game engine and build the Western-style RPG maker I’ve always wanted. I could start a secret erotica empire on Amazon (just kidding, self-publishing isn’t a predictable enough market). A lot of these could help fill my time and help me learn new skills, hopefully making me more employable. But I’m not excited about any of them on their own.

The employability factor behind a lot of this is throwing a wrench in the works, too. It’d probably be in my best interest to make sure what I’m working on adds a line to my resume, or a piece to my tech portfolio. Which makes all of the ideas sound less fun. Then there’s the purely practical ideas like “get a Network+ certificate,” which sound even less fun. And it’s hard to prove to myself it’s necessary, especially since my passion for tech as a field isn’t oriented in a direction that I can get employed in. The closest I’ve come is infosec, and that’ll take a year of hands-on experience before anyone’s willing to actually employ me doing it, making it an impractical direction to pivot at the moment.

So yeah. Feeling a little lost. I hope I find my way back on a path sometime soon.