I was looking forward to Friday off too ...
But if this is how it's going to be, then that's it. I tried my best, stumbled a few times, and proved to the people in charge one way or another whether this is something for me. I just have to push through the last little bit.
If I fail here, what now? There has been a considerable investment in time, money, and energy to bring me up here so I could attend this school. What happens if it is all for nothing? What are we going to do with the year-long lease? Are we going to pack up the stuff in my room a month after unpacking it?
I don't know. It's going to be hard one way or another. Either the path of getting up at five every morning to train as an instrument repairman or the path where I go home and do who knows what with the rest of my life.
There are some things I am not looking forward to. There are some things I must do. But in the end, it all boils down to a decision.
I struggle with the idea that there is someone in charge of this whole thing. If God exists, then I certainly haven't heard him speak--and I've had a live mic for quite some time that has picked up a lot of other stuff, stuff that contradicts the very essence of the idea that there is one being who controls everything. I'm not going to go into detail about that but I believe that if God existed then I would have heard him by now. There is nothing that I have experienced that points in that direction. My life is as much the product of chance as it is anything else.
When you need something to happen, it doesn't. When you want something, whether or not you get it is entirely up to Newtonian mechanics.
The whole "There's a plan!" idea just doesn't seem to fit well with me.
But I want there to be a bigger plan! I want to know, not just believe, that everything is going to work out in the end!
Everyone wants that. That's probably why people are religious in the first place. Life without a plan is difficult for us humans to accept and live by unconditionally. The rules created by biology and sociology and physics leave a lot to be desired when viewed through the human need to have foresight.
Sometimes I feel like I can see the future. At one point I actively believed that I could. But it's always vague, and the things that I want to happen usually don't. Thus, I have learned that it's best to just not ask.
While the work I am doing here at the instrument repair school I am attending is usually interesting, it is the atmosphere around it that is stifling to me. I am expected to perform at a level that I am, to be honest, not entirely capable of. I thought I was handy with objects and tools, but for some reason,I seem to be lacking when it comes to working at the level demanded of me by my instructors. They demand perfection. I am capable of perhaps seventy percent of that at this moment.
The one thing that just gets me down is when my teacher makes a big deal about how bad of a job I did. I bring it to him, and he just goes "Holy shit, you screwed up!" and I think to myself: "oh ... Okay." And then I take it back and review it a couple of times and make sure that it works and then he just takes it and sighs and reworks it without another word, implying that what took me half an hour to get right was a bad job.
I am putting in 99.5 percent effort here. To put in 100 will probably hurt me on a physical level at the rate I'm going at. I just really don't like it when my teacher looks at what I have done and says without cushioning "you did a really bad job, like most people would do better than you, I can do better than you can in half a minute and without any effort whatsoever."
Yes, I am trying! Yes, I have a few failures and pitfalls, like being sleepy in the mornings! I try my damndest but when I'm falling asleep on my feet while trying my hardest to stay awake, and someone assumes it's because I don't want to be there, it just makes me, well, not want to be there. I am pretty sure that most of my sleepiness is due to my meds. But every time I tell someone that yes, it is my meds, they think I am making excuses and not only chalk me up as a person who sleeps on the job but someone who sleeps on the job and makes excuses about it. Bonus points for using medication as the excuse, because everyone knows only sick people take meds and you don't seem sick at all.
Well, fuck you, I am sick. I have a disease that can literally destroy my life if I stop taking the meds. I have to take them--there is no other choice. If you have an infection, sure, you could chance it without meds and you wouldn't be crazy. The same for pretty much any non-life-threatening disease.
But me? I have to take them! I'm not making lazy excuses when I say I fall asleep because of medication! It's the honest to goodness truth!
And then when I get told that my handiwork is sloppy, amateur, and actively bad, even though I am trying my best, all I can say is ...
Sure. Whatever. Maybe I'm not cut out to be an instrument repair tech. Maybe I'm not cut out to work at all. I wanted to do this at the beginning because I actively enjoy repairing instruments. But when I get told that I'm bad at it, when I have to do my best just to score slightly below-average marks, when I have to make an investment of waking up at five every morning just to meet the status quo, I just ...
I don't know what to do. I don't want to go to work tomorrow because I'll screw something up and my instructor will say "holy shit you fucked up" again like I'm some sort of mega failure even when I've tried my best.
I guess in this world it doesn't matter if you've tried your best. I really wanted to be an author, writing books for a living, but I took the second best option because it was better than the alternative. I enjoy repairing instruments about as much as someone can enjoy carrots. While I love writing--I can do it all day and it's what I really want to do with my life--repairing instruments comes in like a solid plan to follow until I make my big break. Which I hope is soon.
But the point is that I am comfortable repairing instruments forty hours a week for an indefinite period of time.
It's just that, in this program, I am being shown directly how mediocre I am. I remember this feeling well from when I dropped out of the engineering program in college. I just wasn't good enough for it. I remember sitting in front of that Circuits I test, taking a look at the first problem, and being all "nope." I handed in the test without making a mark. I had done all the homework. I had attended every lecture and taken notes. There just was something missing from me. I couldn't do it.
And now I have to do this. Work with this program. Because there is no alternative. I'm here in Wisconsin with a year-long lease and all these plans and I have to pass this final exam to even start on my journey.
It's going to be difficult. I know this. But it just makes me feel, well, horrible, when someone who is teaching you takes a look at your handiwork and says "whoa, dude, you fucked up. You're no good at this." Or takes personal offense at the fact that I am tottering on my feet during the mornings.
I don't know what's going to happen at this point. All I can hope is that, whatever happens, it will be for my own good. If that's how things work around here.
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