Hard Country

Getting towards the end of the meditation course now.
This has made me think about what I'm doing next.
This has made me think about my imminent return to Canada to look for a new source of income.
This has made me review my recent employment again... And this is not pleasant!!

I knew this would be the case when I finally got down to it and so back when I finished work about a year ago I decided that I would not deal with it till I had had my break. The intent was to ensure that I was fully able to commit to my break without being held down by worries of the future. The break was to try to shed the stagnant and restricting life that holds me in my old behaviors and habits.

This worked very well for most of my travels though I did do a bit of a review of the past when I was stuck waiting for a clutch about three months back. After that I was happily distracted again by my travels.
However, over the last couple of months, since I turned around in Ecuador (actually since I landed in Columbia), the subject of future direction and employment has been simmering away in my head. This has had the expected and unfortunate effect that I have been less happy and more broody.
I was still unable to really get down to processing it while I was traveling and especially while traveling with someone else from a completely different background - and that just added to the internal bubblings...

But now I´ve been alone at this meditation course for a few weeks and it has surfaced with a vengeance and I have had to go in deep to do battle with the monster ... And it is a big nasty one, and is very hard to subdue!
The problem that I have is quite unusual it seems, since I have never met anyone who I felt really understood my sufferings. My friends would nod and sympathize but I don't think they really understood how it was for me, though I do think they understood the magnitude and importance of the issue for me. The issue is really quite simple but the burden I have carried from it is unusually large.

My problem is that I don't know what I should apply myself to!

I have known for years that what I was doing was not satisfying and that it had been getting worse. The last three years working for a soulless high-tech company that had lost its way were absolutely crippling for me and I stayed way too long.... I stayed because I couldn't figure out what else to do!
This seems strange to most people I try to explain it to since I am most uniquely situated with almost everything I could possibly want to let me apply myself to whatever I want:
I am a white male in my early 40s with a professional career.
I can easily earn more than $100K per year and have a net worth of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I have no wife (or ex), no children, and no parental or sibling responsibilities.
I am intelligent and have excellent health and a wide range of extra curricular activities, interests and skills.
My only "tie" to anything is my mortgage and in reality the house could be easily sold if I felt like it. All this is a privilege beyond most people in my country's dreams let alone the rest of the world.
I am truly one of the most fortunate people to have ever lived - Sure there are plenty I see with more than I but realistically, I am fantastically well off ... and therein lies the problem!...

I just cant figure out what to do and it makes no sense to anyone.

So this is the ground I am working in.
The problem is that I have been working it over for many years without much progress. I have in truth been struggling with it since I first had to try to decide what I should do after year ten in school.. No clue! All my choices since then have more or less been made by default as delaying tactics while I worked on the problem.
The first time it really came to a head though was fifteen years ago when I finished working for the Australian Antarctic Division as an engineer weighing penguins in the Antarctic... The best job I have ever had - though it had its down side too.
At that point, a relationship also ended and my whole world basically fell apart... I ended up spending a year traveling and soul searching and the "rolling stone" came to rest in Vancouver Canada. Then the "long strong arm of economic rationalism" took control and I again submitted to just doing something that brought in money and didn't really deal with my problem. From there I have rolled on in the usual "buying time" manner but have always been processing the problem in the background.
Through the years, the processing has been slow and has to this point not actually solved the problem, though I have to say it has given me many rewards and insights into my own, other peoples, and the worlds workings. The cost however has been that I have been quite a broody personality and that makes it hard for people to like me if they only get a brief glimpse of who I am... And that is quite isolating and that contributes to the broody etc. etc.

However the demon has still been lurking there and his time to rise has been coming as I have frittered away my financial resources while I traveled... And rise he has,... And this time, Slay him I will!

Hmmm Slaying dragons was not on my itinerary when I set out on this trip, but I guess it does actually fit under the umbrella of "adventure touring".

"Hard Country" indeed!