A New Year...

Here I am at close to midnight on New Year's Eve. Sitting on my couch with my Mac on the TV tray I use as it's desk, typing up a blog post. It's been a hell of a year, and I already know 2023 is going to be super stressful, well, at least the first half of the year will be. So yeah, I thought I should probably write a post, as I haven't done that in such a long time.

I haven't kept up with writing blog posts, as things have been chaotic at best, and boring at worse. I have decided to get into a different career path. As my last couple of posts written months ago indicated, I lost my job of 12 years at the end of May. This had me scrambling a bit to try to figure something out. Out of the blue, I tried to apply to a local VFX company that worked on many of the projects I love watching as a production coordinator. I did get an interview quickly after that, but unfortunately did not receive that job offer. The other person had more experience in film production. However, this finally gave me a direction to move towards. I wanted to figure out how I could possibly get into VFX or animation production.

In my last post, I had indicated that there were numerous times I wanted to try my hand at getting into animation, but my drawing skills aren't that great and the homework was too extensive. Now of course I realize that was more of a problem with my undiagnosed at the time inattentive ADHD, but still. That desire always lingered. So after this company, I decided to do a little research on the industry. As it turns out, this is a business that is booming currently in the Metro Vancouver area. I also had a lot of the qualifications from my experience as a Creative Production Coordinator for print at my last job, but didn't understand how the film production timelines worked. I wondered how I could possibly get into this career.

Out of the blue, I see an ad on Facebook advertising to get Video Game Production training. I looked at the course outline and it taught a lot of the things I needed to learn to get into film production. At the same time, my parents were offering to help me out with a course if I wanted to go back to school to transition into something else. They didn't really feel this was an accredited school, so I started to see what else was out there, maybe locally and not just an online learning course. It feels almost as if the universe answered my question, as I then saw an ad either on Facebook or LinkedIn advertising for Production for Animation and VFX microcredential course offered from Vancouver Community College. I showed my parents this course, and they agreed it was a better option. I spent the fall working on the course, 4 modules in total, with an online class and an in-person class per week. It was a great class and one I can't recommend enough if anyone else was in the same boat as me. Now comes the fun part of applying for work and hopefully landing a job in a career that I will love doing. I know I will love doing it because I know it's my dream job. I know about timelines and keeping things up-to-date. I know about writing reports from meetings to weekly updates. And I have had a long time love of animation and special effects types of movies. Plus, hearing what the industry work experience is like, that the offices like to do special events together, and actually do Halloween parties and things like that, well, it's like this career was where I belonged all along. Now to just get my foot in the door...

I've still been struggling with keeping up my home, however. The place is a mess and I find it overwhelming to tackle the whole thing, to the point where I just avoid it altogether, which makes me feel more anxious and overwhelmed because it still has to get done at some point, and the more I put it off, the more I freak out I haven't touched anything. I keep promising myself that tomorrow is the day I'm going to start just before I go to bed. Then I can't sleep, or stay up too late playing on my phone, or reading, or just can't get my damned brain to shut down enough for me to sleep. Mostly because I'm overwhelmed and anxious about my place being in such a disarray. So you'd think that I'd wake up wanting to tackle it, right? Wrong. When you finally fall asleep sometime between 5:00 and 8:00 in the morning, you just don't get out of bed. And up here in Canada, the daylight hours in winter don't last that long, so I wind up sleeping until dark. So then the darkness makes me think the whole day is done and I'll just avoid it for another day. And repeat. For months. Literally months. If not a year in some cases. If not years when it comes to my second bedroom/office.

You know how some people have junk drawers in their kitchen, where they shove all the things that don't have a place into? Well, I don't have a junk drawer in my kitchen. I do have a junk room, though. It's where all the things I don't really use but don't know what to do with wind up being. It's a pit. Mostly filled with junk or old paper. Lots and lots of papers.... This room scares the hell out of me. It's too much.

Feeling this conflict between overwhelmed with too much work to do and anxiety about not doing it, it's been so hard to just get up and deal with it all. Then I get an email a couple of days ago from my landlord. She said her husband's health has gotten worse and he will likely not be returning back to work again so they are giving me a huge heads up that by the end of June my tenancy will be ended. I guess his oldest daughter is going to be moving in to help out around the house, and help him emotionally as well to deal with these new challenges. My hunch is they will be trying to sell the place by the summer or fall and downsize to a condo, as I would do that if I were in their shoes. Nevertheless, this has put even more stress on my shoulders. I was sort of hoping 2023 would work out better than 2022 did for me, and maybe get me launched into my dream career, but also realizing most of these jobs are downtown Vancouver from 9:00-6:00 Mondays through Fridays, with possible overtime occasionally, and commuting would be somewhat of a nightmare, so the thought that by 2024 I'll probably want to move closer, at least to the Canada Line, if not in the 1 zone of Vancouver for transit. So I knew this possibility would present itself to me some day, but I wasn't expecting the news that the timeline has a due date of June 30th of 2023 to move out.

The overwhelm and anxiety has erupted. At first, the feeling of depression and hopelessness sort of crept in again. I mean, it's been a brutal year, and the 2020s so far has been chaotic and unpredictable in so many ways. And yes, I know there are those who are dealing with a lot worse circumstances as mine, those involved in wars or who are homeless on the streets, but it's also super expensive in Metro Vancouver now that this has me really terrified. I have a lot of work to do in 6 months time. I'm trying to formulate a timeline for myself in a project management sort of way, but it's not like I haven't attempted this many, many times before and never followed through with it.

The first priority is for me to clean the house, start to declutter it, and find a job. So that will be my focus for January. I also want to get into a once a week cleaning the house routine, which I am choosing Sundays for, so it doesn't get overwhelming again. I want to start working by hopefully February (or continue to job search), finish decluttering, figure out what I could possibly sell versus donate or throw away/recycle. I still don't know if I'm going to Fan Expo Vancouver or not, as, yeah, not wanting to spend so much money, but there are so many actually cool people coming this time so far that I'm tempted. March will focus on starting the search for the apartment. It's been awhile since I had to look for a place, and I know prices are ridiculous right now, but I also will need to know if now it's run by realtors or if it's still a craigslist thing. So obviously I will have to research that. I'll also plan to hold a yard sale to sell off the things that are sellable to see if I can get money for them and start the process of packing up the non-essential things. April and May will be more of the apartment searching and packing. I'll need to find a new place to rent by June and prepare to move, book a mover, pack up the essentials and all that stuff. Plus deep cleaning everything and replacing some of the blinds that the cats have destroyed over the years with their excitement to look outside at some bird, raccoon or squirrel making noises out there.

This seems doable... The question is, will I get out of my own way and get it done, or will I wind up procrastinating it all again? Who knows... I just know I'm not going to have much time to do much of anything else for the first half of the year at least with all this work that needs to be done. I also have to remember that the lady upstairs has offered to help me with decluttering (as that's what she does for a living, I guess) for free and if it all seems too much, I need to remember to ask for help when needed. I think I'll see how things go after the next couple of weeks before I do that, though. Perhaps the New Year, New You energy will kick my ass in gear. Sometimes it does for the first 3 weeks of January, so you never know. What I know for sure is this work has to happen now. I can't delay it any longer. There's no more time. I have a timeline now. Let's hope I stick with it!

I'm hoping next year will finally be my year to shine and things work out. I also hope next year brings more peace to the world. I think I'm sick and tired of people arguing all the time about everything. I'm even tired of myself arguing about things all the time. It's just not worth it anymore. No more resentments or anger or stress. Just breathe and concentrate on the things you can control. Remember, you can't control other people. You can only control how you respond to other people. Choose not to respond to those angry arguers. Love is more powerful than hate. That was the lesson from the first Wonder Woman movie. And love is so much easier than harbouring hate is, too. If someone wants to fight, wish them well, and move on. Life is too short to engage with those who want to argue. Agree to disagree and let things go because the more angrier you get, the more they win.

Yeah, I've been doing a timeline watch of Star Wars since December 1st, so the light side and dark side of the force is echoing in my ears lately.

Anyways, I hope every decent person out there has a happy new year for 2023. I certainly hope it all works out for me as well. Just close my eyes and take a deep breath. I've got this! For all I know, this is precisely the direction the universe has carved out for me when I finally asked for help in March of 2021. We shall see. One day at a time.

Thanks for reading, for those who do such things.