Dealing with a surreal time in our lifetime

Who could of predicted what we are currently experiencing? For sure 2020 has been a strange year indeed. I also knew going into this year, I would face a few bumps. My contract was going to end and I needed to secure a new job for starters. But being in a 4 week lockdown? I never dreamed of anything like this.

In the last couple of weeks in January I began to get very anxious and a bit scared as the end of the month drew closer. For my entire working life, I have been searching for my career. I thought I had found it a few times, but I would get disillusioned after a while. While the anxiety was creeping up and beginning to distract me, a colleague asked me me a simple question. "What do you want to do for your career, or do you need to do project work?" This was a lightbulb moment in realisation for me as I do need constant change and stimulus to do high quality work. Mundane, repetitive tasks make me apathetic and disillusioned. I need to be creative, stimulated and given some freedom to allow me to achieve work goals. The other bump along the way to finding my next job has been my recent work history.

Since coming out, being forced out of work, recovering from depression and making head roads, I don't have much work history in the areas that I feel I can make significant contributions. Another barrier is that I am a kinesthetic learner. I learn by doing and trying. Failure and problem solving is something that comes naturally to me. I struggle to learn via textbook, or institutional ways. And it's that institutional system that is set up for success for the majority of people. Choose a career path, study, work from the bottom up and success follows. That model doesn't work for me. I am too creative, to chaotic with my thinking. I am an internal perfectionist, so I have very high standards in what I do. I don't project those expectations, but I do get frustrated at times when people don't have the same standards as I do. These expectations are reflective my drawings which I have done this year. I watched a few YouTube videos for drawing tutorials and learnt from those to really develop my drawing. The drawings left are the same reference photo with the left side done in 2018, with the one on the right done 2020.

Another drawing I did was of someone who was a hero of mine, as they were very outspoken regarding mental health and addiction problems. The legendary Robin Williams. When I heard of his death, I was devastated and I saw a photo that I really wanted to try and replicate. There are a few areas where I could improve on this, but generally, I am very happy how the picture came out.

Now, job hunting has essentially become impossible with New Zealand going on 4 week lockdown to combat the covid-19 virus pandemic. So throughout the next period of time, I have a few distractions to see me through, but this does not solve the problem of my finances. For the last 5 years, I have been bouncing from house, to room ,to apartment, to housesits, to charity, to anywhere looking for some sort of stability. I have now found it, but I am desperately struggling to get quality work that will keep me mentally healthy, as well as providing an income. I am well aware that this constant stress of poverty is causing long term health issues for me and I cannot afford to live like this for the rest of my life.

I have major confidence problems. It's not that I am not confident in my own abilities, because I am. I see problems and patterns well ahead of other people, and many times in my working life, it has caused issues as people are a few steps behind, especially with male managers who are insecure about their own abilities. But I have learnt and I am looking ahead, not behind. I feel my skills, abilities and talent can let me do just about anything I want to. It's making people believe that I can do what they are looking for in an employee. I am not my past, I am my future. I don't want to do what I have done, I want to do something new and exciting, until I feel like I have succeeded with that, then I want to do something else.

My creativity is also a bit of hurdle. Some may even say a curse. I enjoy drawing with pencil and paper, but I also enjoy drawing digitally. I no longer have any equipment to do that at this stage, but hopefully that will change. I love writing, hence this blog. But I also have many stories in my head I want to tell. I have science fiction, fantasy, a reflective transition journey and a few other story ideas in my head. I have already mapped out more than one story, and I am at around page 260 of a book/series I am writing. I do however get bored and distracted. While I can sit and focus for hours upon hours on one task, I can just as easily go about and procrastinate for a while, achieving very little. I am well aware of areas I struggle with, areas I need to focus on if I want to be a more rounded person.

Now how do I leverage all my talents and abilities into a positive sales pitch for a job? And will there be an abundance of jobs available after this lockdown? Will the lockdown extend beyond the 4 weeks? What will the working world look like after the lockdown? What will New Zealand look like after the lockdown and when we break the covid-19 pandemic crisis? And when will we be open again to the rest of the world?

I know that the world will be different after this plague has finally come to an end, but where will I fit in it? Have we just lost those civil liberties that have been hard won over generations of institutional prejudice? Or is this a turning corner for these long standing institutional patriarchy government systems to have what is close to a fresh start as we will ever get?

The future maybe uncertain and unpredictable, but this virus will attack without prejudice. It doesn't care about religious belief, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, wealth or poverty. Is it an external threat that has long been predicted that can unit all of humanity to combat together. Are we good enough to do that, or is there just too much hatred and corrupt coding in us as a species that makes it impossible to be able to come together, as one united species?

Kia ataahua, kia miharo.