Fear, especially when I’m “comfortable” in life, is my biggest hurdle to making a change. It took a global pandemic, loss of my Mum, my daughter moving to a new city, a diagnosis, and a dose of luck to end up in my current job. What will it take for me to dive into something risky and new which puts everything on the line? It that even morally responsible?

The decline.

I’m sorry. Covid MAY have been my fault. I pretty much prayed for it.

I’ve had a history with the church – which is a story for another blog post – but just before Covid struck the world down, I remember distincly one night praying for something drastic to happen, something world-changing that would force a change into the life I really wanted. Something, anything to trip the circuit breaker and give me a chance to start anew. I was starting to feel pretty darn tootin down about my own self-worth and strength, so the consequences of asking for such a “miracle” on the rest of the world were far too quiet to consider, over the yelling of my ego’s self-pity-party.

A couple years before that I went through a divorce. I somehow managed to scrounge enough money and convince the banks I was good for a mortgage. So then I had no money, plenty of debt, spiralled into depression, hated my job, wasn’t too fond of myself, and was doing everything I could at work to do anything other than what I was employed for. As well as sometimes-pilot, I was the IT guy. I computerised everything – built software to manage the school, online learning… Even convinved them I could build a flight simulator. Yes, a physical, certified, pilot-training flight simluator. It sucked – both the trying to build it for far too little money, and the simulator… I cringe thinking about it now. If I could try again NOW I bet I could do…. NO stop it.

The bottom.

My boss was incredibly understanding. I had been, for the 10 or 11 years prior a good employee, and I was a good pilot and flight instructor. He wasn’t going to throw me out on the streets, but we did need to talk. I ended up getting part-time work as a videographer at a local production company, and going part-time at the flight school. I ended up talking to the doctor about my depression, and talked about treatment. Contacting my aviation medical examiner and telling him about my depression was a solid reminder that while honesty is legally the best and only policy, sometimes it doesn’t lead to the most ideal outcomes. Until I went though psychiatrist assessments, and the medication and my mood had stabilised, I legally couldn’t keep flying. The flight school were going through their own politics now, money was tight, and I had to reduce from part time to “contractor”.

I seriously thought I was done for. It was the lowest I’d been in my life. I couldn’t stay focussed on a single thing for more than 10 minutes, had no motivation, and thought I’d have to go bankrupt.

Prayers answered.

Then Covid happened. Suddenly I was managing the online distance-learning while people were at home. That was awful. I had a little more money coming in. As we went in and out of lockdown, my mood started to stabilise a bit. I think, in part, due to the novelty of the situation. This taught me that yes, I get bored REALLY easily. Day-to-day grind and repetition is not for me. I like certain routines – going for a walk to a cafe each morning, but that’s like 20 minutes. I’m talking about doing the same job for 8 hours a day; the best hours of my day. I flew a little bit again after being cleared, and really enjoyed it for a while.

However I was still contracting, still weary, and still restless and frustrated at myself for going round in circles. One day, quite out of the blue, my boss (the boss of the flight school) said to me “Hey, do you remember Nathan?”

“Yes.” I had met him several years before when I worked with him one-on-one to try and “link” our flight schools. I got on well with him, and he was impressed with our systems and software.

“Well he’s looking for a software developer, and asked me if you were still around.”

Ticket outta there.

And there it was. My ticket. I had a phone call with him, and the other developer Sam, and was off running. Shortly after that Covid locked us down again, so for two or three solid months, I coded my heart out. I got paid. I slowly climbed out of the red, and wasn’t going to go bankrupt. My “dream” job – as long as I deliver and work a certain minimum number of hours, I can work whenever, and from wherever I want. I felt more free than I had ever felt, even if I weren’t allowed to really leave the house. I started live-streaming again. Dare I allow myself to feel it, I started to feel happy.

I didn’t pray for that.

April 2020. This probably deserves its own write-up, but my Mum died suddenly in her sleep without warning. It destroyed me. I had lost my dad 9 years prior. My daughter had moved to Auckland with her Mum. I felt so alone. I felt so tired, defeated, and depression came back with a vengeance. After all the jobs taking care of Mum were done, sleeping on the couch in the living room of my house instead of my bed. I think it was because that’s where I found her, in her bed. I think partly, I just needed the TV on, and the space around me. I’m pretty sure at one point, I only got up for the bathroom and a token bit of food (that an amazing friend delivered to me) for a stretch of about 5 or 6 days. I really don’t remember.

When I woke out of that stupor, and lockdowns became less frequent and restrictive, I decided I needed to patch up relationships, and move closer to my daughter. I immediately started looking for a place in Auckland, and started renting out my home in Napier.

The rest is history. I’ve been here 5 years now, and with my partner for 4 years at the time of writing this. I’m still doing software development, I still enjoy it and love the team, but… I KNOW there’s more for me now.

I’m afraid to ask.

It took divorce, my daughter moving away, covid, then the loss of my Mum for me to change jobs (passively, I might add – semi-lucky, as I did make the network, but getting cold-called is pretty darn rare), and move city. I’ve gone through this in my head many many times. Flagellated myself over how weak I was, proud of myself how I got through all that where I am now – it was complicated.

Now there is a balance, where I’m kinder to myself, and far happier in general than life than I was previously. Life’s little downs are on the scale of a day or two, rather than weeks. I know I need to ride those waves out, and I can take some positive steps to moving through them. Generally, life’s good.

But I’m still bored. So the question is the title of this post.

“What’s it going to take to change?”

I’m afraid to ask. Why though? There is nothing in this universe that requires a set of events like what happened before, for me to step up and start making changes in life. It’s all fear. It’s all situation that I’ve put myself into one way or another. Each choice has put me in this place where I’m afraid to lose any amount of income, as I’m living down to the wire of what I earn. Each choice I make whether I write another blog post, stream, do some work on a project, what projects of other people I engage in – that’s ALL my choice. I have a lot of power to choose, every hour of every day.

What will it take?

So what am I going to choose? I’m so lucky to be able to ask that question. Is it so bad, working each day on a job that you’re good at, but become so-so about in enthusiasm? It it “delusions of granduer” speaking, that I feel like I’m capable of more – making this workshop where I’ll shove all my tools I’ve collected over the years and swing the doors open to the public? Is it crazy that I think it can work, even though there’s so much that might not?

What’s it going to take, for me to make a change?

It’s going to take me stopping asking all these questions.

I think that’s it, honestly. Stop asking the damn questions, and instead, choose every day. Choose consciously what I do at each moment. Make it deliberate, and considerate. Lamenting, worrying, fretting, regretting – NONE of those things will make a change, they will only increase the frustration about stagnancy.

So that’s it I guess. I’ll choose, instead of waiting for the Universe and life to choose for me. Weird. I’m not that spiritual, but I did a Tarot reading with a friend semi-recently and that’s basically exactly what it said… I need to take the wheel because if I don’t, Jesus/the universe will. Stuff will happen, but if the latter happens it, it’ll be messy.