The Truth is in there

OK, I've been roaming around in blogspace and the whole while I was thinking how my blog is lacking in guts. I pay a lot of lip service to the grand ideals of self awareness, ego restraint, peace in the moment, and of course truth (this is a simple list, I tend to move on after I list three or four items). The "truth" is that the recognition of these fundamental things that truly make us human was a very recent occurrence for me. I sometimes wonder when I will "get over it" but just continue to realize that this is a lifelong journey. So I quit my job a year and a half ago. Sr. Design Engineer was the title. Integrated Circuit Design was the field. Semiconductor was the industry. A confused soul adrift in a sea of unenlightened egoists was I. My life philosophy was simple, I called it agnostic. It was basically I wont bother you if you don't bother me. The trouble was that the path that had led me to where I was involved more decisions based on what I thought a person in my situation should do rather than what I wanted or needed. I always associated effort and drive as the tools of the ungifted ladder climbers. I imagined an ideal world where everyone was immediately recognized and moved up in the world based on merit. Basically I was a self centered ass hole who lacked the will to take what he felt he deserved. Sufficient alcohol could on occasion remove the restraints and the pure egomaniac would emerge. I especially enjoyed to belittle the "ignorant". It is funny how we humans play this "us and them" game (funny being synonymous with absurd in my vocab these days). I never evaluated myself using the criteria that I used to judge others. So of course I was miserable. I medicated this state quite frequently with smoke* (I got this from a friend's blog and have decided to use the same terminology). It got to the point that my life seemed like an alternation between unrewarding intense long hours of work and some form of intoxication with friends. I lived in a different country from my family and really didn't keep in very close contact with them. I was very miserable. I had some very good friends even then so the situation wasn't rock bottom but I didn't see how I was going to make it any better. So I quit and moved back to Canada. It was a simultaneously humbling and liberating experience. It was the first time I ever deviated from the stable career path I put myself on back in highschool. It was insane. It was brilliant. I ended up being given the honour of being best man at a very close friends wedding and at the wedding started to feel returned affections from a beautiful kind hearted girl I had had a little crush on while living in the US. I could go into the details of what followed but I guess I'll just say that I fell for her in a way I had never fallen before. We never ended up together but I have a million fond memories of her and I took something incredibly valuable away with me: an understanding of what love truly is. I cannot argue with the fickle forces of fate that conspired against our relationship, but I am incredibly grateful for the knowledge of spirituality, respect, and universal perspective that I began to understand from my experiences with her. I regained a passion for music, art, literature, and poetry and gained a new perspective on religion. Things I never understood in life, and never admitted to myself that I didn't understand, now made sense to me. I reconnected with my family and am in the process of reconnecting with many of my old friends. Apparently there are lots of people just like me out there. I listened and listened to music, I read and read and read. I started out doing my own personal comparative study of religion, moved on to Philosophy, and haven't stopped yet. So this is why I now feel like Hamlet. I know what I need to do but I am still searching outside of myself. Of course there is more to it than I have written down on this page. I guess I am just so used to going with the flow where the fear of the future is minimal. So my current ideas (in no particular order) are such:
1. Get a job doing what I was doing and let my new life perspective make it bearable.
2. Keep working for the family business and live low stress, volunteer a little
3. Cash in remains of stock purchase plan and travel (Europe, Asia, Australia?)
4. Apply to film school
5. Apply to arts program in Philosophy/Literature split major
6. Apply to graduate engineering program (CAD soft. dev., BioEngineering neurons stuff)
7. Join some well intentioned NGO
8. Just start writing
9. Keep working on list of things to do without actually doing any of them.
The truth is that I'm not the happiest camper right now. I fear the future in a way I never used to. I feel the burden of choice rather than the shackles of fate and am scared. I despise admitting weakness. I love being real. So that is where I'm at. I unloaded two containers of heaters today at work so I guess this is the result of my peaceful manual labour meditation. Once again, more to come...