My son has had an epiphany, his moment of realisation, that bit as a teenager when you have a stream of consciousness, the outpouring of everything that you think you've done wrong, in life, in love, with friends, decisions, money, everything.
It's been a while coming.
To recap, #1 Son left school with some A levels, but decided that work was a better option than further study, he's been a poor student, in the sense of application, he's bright as anyone I know, but comes with low self esteem, and was often bullied. He managed a year of work hard work 5am to 2pm, and then decided to go to University. We worked hard with him to get him to choose a course that was the right one, and he made his choices, signed up all the forms and went on his merry way. A few months in he had angst about if it was the right thing, and recently decided that it really wasn't him and he's dropping out.
So follows is his long missive about how he feels, and it makes me sad, and I feel helpless about how to help. I can give him money, which will ease some burden and I can tell him that he's in a place that everyone has been in - give or take, same or different - at one point or another. I can't pay his debt for him, well I can but that wouldn't solve anything. So I have a Son without a job and with dreams, and no plan.
I think I've found my problem. I currently have a combination of a few things wrong up there in the head.
I have so many things I want to do. I want to learn how to use 3DS Max competently for Modelling and Animation. I want to learn how to design levels with the Source SDK and the UDK. I want to finish my Warhammer models my Dad got me, simply so I can say they are done. I want to pull out the dremel tool and make a necklace for my Godmother because I know she likes handmade things for Christmas presents and I haven't given her one for a few years now. I have a sketched out design for a laptop stand to have on my knees so I can actually use the comfy chair without burning my knees off.
I just cant decide what to do first because I'll miss out on the opportunity to do the other thing, so I retreat into videogames and the SA forums. Simply so I can put them down and forget about them for the rest of the day because the Tribes: Ascend thread has 30 more posts and the PYF Macros thread has 3 days worth of content that I'll find momentarily distracting. At this point my laptop is and appears to be a lifeline keeping me from actually realising fully, the impact that I've had on myself through taking a break from Uni, working for a year and being a steadily shittier worker as I became more and more dissilusioned with 5am starts and not knowing when I was going home, signing up for 3pm WoW raids that I'd just get home in time for if I left within the hour of my contracted time didnt help there. More than once I was called out at work for rushing through my last duties and getting grumpy that it wasn't finishing. I have a sneaking suspicion that those actions have fucked up all hopes for using that year as a reference for future work. It really doesnt help that in the last two years I've put hours that number in the thousands into Video Games, merely because that was what let me not care. I want to stop but I keep justifying it as my entertainment, when in reality its just an escape.
I've also figured out that I have a very hard time actually putting what I want to do in words. For example I just tried to make a list of what I want to do in the next year... and I was stumped, even though there is so many things I want to do. I can bullshit my way through a Semester 1 Geography paper. I got 79% on a Essay test I didnt even know was happening, just by turning up and writing. Not even a shred of study because I was sick the day it was announced. And yet I'm so undecided on what I actually want to do I cant make a full list of everything.
Me going to university hasn't helped much in terms of where I am in life.. I'm now more than 10,000 dollars in debt and nothing to show for it except my word that I've gone to university. This has the knock on effect of not having a job when I desperately need one so that I can afford things like Credit for my phone, Fuel for my car and being able to enjoy a night out with my friends. Things that I became accustomed too as I was pulling in 500 dollars a week after tax. Money which I've squandered on being a greedy, selfish person. The entire 8000 dollars that I had from that job is gone merely because I just couldnt control my spending. I feel incredibly rude, almost evil when Sam offers to give me petrol and insists she pays for meals, even though she knows I cant afford if after buying 30 dollars in Petrol and 25 dollars in Bus tickets merely to get to uni, on top of me buying bottles of cokes simply because I was and still am addicted to the caffiene that I get from it. Add to this the breakfast I'd buy more than occasionally at uni because I couldnt eat when I woke up, so I'd go to uni and get hungry when i got there, meaning I'd buy food instead of my family noticing that I'd be taking more with me.
The problem with all that is that I've gained far too much weight. In fact I'm at the point where I'm too scared to weigh myself. Knowing how heavy I am this point just wouldnt do me any good. Sam keeps assuring me its okay but I really am not happy with how I look and feel about myself, how my clothes have gotten tighter throughout the year, and how shirts that once fit me are now too tiny to put on. I'm disgusted when I see myself in the mirror these days. If I keep on eating the way I do I'll keel over before I'm 50. I'm pretty damn sure of it. Problem is, I don't know how to stop. I keep telling myself, as my so used its almost broken eftpos card goes through the machine "Next week Cameron".
That's not to say that university is a bad thing. I've made more friends in the 2/3'ds of the year that I was there than all the bullying filled, incredibly low self esteem years that marked my Schooling, Where I retreated into the Libraries, and ending up making better friends with the librarians than most of my classmates that I knew in more than pasing. It's a good feeling, to be able to have a conversation with people your age that doesn't eventually dissolve in me wanting to quit school and fuck off into the wilderness. That feeling was quite rare in High School. It's much better now.
My other current problem is trying to learn something myself through the internet.
On my PC before I reformatted it there was. (Some pirated, some student versions. Not as if I was gonna drop thousands of dollars to learn something.)
-Photoshop
-Vegas 10
-3DS max
-Maya
-Mudbox
-Audacity
-FL Studio
-GIMP
-PLDX Movie Tool.
And I hardly knew how to use any of them because I gave up when someone wasn't there to hold my hand. I know that I describe myself to employers as a "Quick Learner" But looking at this it seems like its mostly bullshit.
My curent goal is to learn 3DS Max and get a job at Weta Workshop. However for all I know I'm going to decide that I want to be a fucking Marketing Expert or a Creative designer. I know my mind craves work that lets me think and express myself. It just doesn't have the attention span to decide what it fucking wants to do and stick to it. This is going to take some more thinking. If I had spare money for Petrol I'd just drive somewhere and try and write about it. But then again, no spare money.
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