This is my mantra these days. It comes from the process of working through plans regarding what I want and how I want to spend my time, what’s important to me and how I think I’m going to fulfill my needs and desires. Everything I plan and set into motion is all based on predictions that I think is going to fulfill me and make me happy. And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. So I “Live, Learn and Adjust”.

Twelve years ago I was looking for something that I could do as a job that would bring in enough money to pay my bills and possibly cover significant lengths of time off so I could work on art – making films and writing screenplays. I had a window cleaning business at the time and considered making that my income source. In 2000, fresh off my Bachelor of Arts degree in Film Studies, I had grand plans to spend my summers running my window cleaning business and the winters writing screenplays in Mexico. But, window cleaning wasn’t really that fulfilling and I’m not highly motivated when it comes to business or making money and eventually I knew that if I was going to earn regular income then it wasn’t going to come from self-employment. However, that’s a lesson I’m continuing to learn.

I lived (ran a business), learned (massive debt, no steady income) and adjusted (began pursuing a career in the fire department). Being a firefighter seemed like a really great idea. I was drawn to it because I possessed the qualities that made me a good fit for the job: physically capable, perfect vision and hearing, the industry desperately needed more women, eager to be of service, yet always aware of safety consciousness. Knowing that women had a better chance of getting in because of the extreme lack of females in the industry I felt motivated to make it happen. I’m not really a competitive person. I don’t like to “fight” for my place. I prefer to gravitate to where I belong. At the time, my logical mind convinced me that that was where I belonged.

I spent nearly a year of schooling in Manitoba getting fully trained as a firefighter and paramedic. If I’d stayed in Manitoba I feel that I would’ve been hired. They had mandates in place to ensure that more women were getting hired and they only accepted as many people into the fire college as were being hired in the nearby towns and cities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. However, I had dreams of moving to BC. I didn’t want to stay living in Winnipeg. It’s just not for me. So, in 2004, after graduating from fire college, my primary objective was to move to Vancouver – no job, no apartment, just move. And so I did.

I continued to pursue a job in firefighting for a couple of years, but the hiring climate was very different. There were no specific mandates for hiring women and no limits on the number of people trained for the position. This meant that there were hundreds more people fully qualified for hire and only the best of the best were being hired. Which is great, of course, for the firehalls, but not great for those of us who had hoped to get hired with the qualifications we already possessed. Here, to get hired, one needed the most volunteer hours, the most rescue, medical and mechanical courses, the most experience in related activities (tools, trucks, you know, that manly stuff).

Meanwhile, always on the back-burner was my desire to make film. Continually there, waiting, hoping that once I get hired that I could still pursue it while working as a firefighter. Specifically I wanted to make sexually explicit lesbian videos – dyke porn. I thought I might do it in secret as I continued to build my career as a firefighter. After two years of working as a window cleaner, volunteering twice a week, applying to every department in the Lower Mainland, going further into debt to pay for extra rescue, driving and medical courses I found myself feeling unsure if I even wanted to live my life as a firefighter. Certain aspects did not appeal to me: shift-work in the uber-masculine environment of the firehall, the very real and documented health dangers of exposing oneself to toxic chemicals in fires, hard physical labour, exposure to high level emergencies on a semi-daily basis and literally watching people die. I know the rewards are great – helping people, financial stability, social status and admiration, job satisfaction – but I wasn’t so sure that I really needed those rewards at the price of what it took to actually be a firefighter. I was conflicted.

I was learning that I wasn’t so sure about this future that I’d planned so carefully. But, I wasn’t making any adjustments. Looking back I think I was stuck in fear – fear of failure, and fear of disappointing my family who were finally proud of their queer rebellious artist daughter. So, in 2006, the Universe did the next logical thing for me in my time of stuckness. It pulled everything out from underneath me. As a friend called it, I got a “hard reset”. I lost everything.

Now, I’m being a bit dramatic, but that’s how it felt at the time. There was no death, destruction or trauma, so relatively speaking, it could’ve been worse. But, for the context of that time – the bottom fell out from underneath me. I lost a long-time relationship, my apartment, my truck with all my work-equipment was stolen and then written-off, in the break-up I got nothing but my clothes and a few books (oh, and my cat Nancy, she goes with me everywhere). I even lost my wallet and crashed my computer. It was just one of those times where you’re forced to start over. It was hard, but it was also great. The best thing for me.

It became a time that I was really able to evaluate “what do I want?”. I don’t want to be a firefighter and I do want to make my own porn. I don’t care about money and social status and I do care about integrity of art and feeling happy and fulfilled. Done and done. By 2007 I’d deliberately skipped out on the latest recruitment to Vancouver Fire Department and published my own brand of pornography – Good Dyke Porn™. I continued to work as a window cleaner off and on over the years whenever I needed to make some money to get by when the business wasn’t providing the money for me. And to be honest, the business didn’t really provide the money much at all over the years. I just found more and more ways to borrow and to scrape by on nearly nothing. I was still needing to learn the lesson about my incompatibility of living full-time on self-employment. I wasn’t ready to give that one up because self-employment brings me so much joy. I’m a freedom seeker at my core. I always have been. In my youth that caused some trouble for me and my caretakers and as I got older that freedom seeking manifested in self-employment and continual piling up of debt. Determined to crack the code of making it work, I persisted. When I was self-employed as a window cleaner and not fully succeeding it was pretty easy to walk away from that, but being self-employed as a dyke pornographer and scraping by on next to nothing, well, that I wanted to make work. There was no way I was going to give up on that.

So I continued to live it. But, at some point I need to learn that it wasn’t working and eventually adjust. Which brings us to 2012.

By this time, I’d learned that social status wasn’t important to me. I didn’t care what people thought about the answer to the question: what do you do? Whether the answer was firefighter, pornographer, or window cleaner, truly didn’t matter to me. I’d learned that what mattered most to me was everyday enjoyment of life, work and leisure. And I’d learned that my pursuit of freedom was actually placing me into bondage through debt, obligation and poverty of resources. So, I adjusted. I got a full-time job. Not a fancy job, not a well-paying job, but a job that I felt would actually be good for me. When I broke down the things that I like to do in the world (besides my art) it was something like this: I like to walk, I like to observe my surroundings (people-watch), I like to help people whenever possible, and I like to practise patience, presence and awareness. So I became a security guard. It didn’t pay very well, but it was easy to get and with full-time hours I was instantly in the black. I got caught up on bills, I paid back friends and I had cash in my wallet whenever I needed it for the first time in years. Now that is freedom. But, I didn’t want to forget about all the work I’d done with Good Dyke Porn™. I wanted to keep working on it. But, it didn’t work out quite that way. With working the hours that I was and being the person that I am (one who places very little value on busyness or setting aside comfort and happiness), I found it too difficult to work the full-time job and maintain the business to the same extent that I did to date. Enter Haitus 2012. This year I updated the site to the best of my ability but there haven’t been much in the way of updates. Also, I attempted to redo the website this summer when I had a major crash of the old one which is still needing a lot of work. So here I am, happy, free, working a job, making money, but not able to do the work I love (my art) to the extent that I desire. Lived. Learned. Time to adjust.

I was still bringing in money from my business. I still wanted to keep it going to a certain extent, and I decided that I just needed to move my hours down to part-time. The opportunities at the company I was working for initially weren’t panning out so I decided to cast the net a bit further and I applied to other companies. Through living I’d learned that I like the work of a security guard, but I wanted something part-time. I learned that I don’t like working in medical establishments, so I wanted something different – maybe an office building or condo high-rise, I wasn’t sure. I learned that I wanted regular hours, not graveyard – too isolating. I learned that I wanted to work within walking distance of home – there were tons of opportunities for that as I live downtown. Knowing all this, up came a new opportunity. I was offered a job at a hotel, with hours that weren’t graveyard, within walking distance, but full-time. I decided to go for it. I was told I could possibly go down to part-time in the future.

It was a good adjustment. I really enjoy the environment of the hotel. I love the people there. I love patrolling throughout the establishment, I love the liveliness and the myriad goings-on to monitor and respond to. I love that I wear a suit and tie – it makes me feel good, a nice change from wearing pajamas to work everyday in my apartment. And I still love that the full-time income allows for great freedom to spend time with friends over dinner and drinks, take up dancing with my girlfriend, book a trip to Cuba over the winter and buy much needed clothes and furniture. I’m living and loving it, but continually learning that it’s not quite right. I’m continually learning that I need to go down to part-time so I can get back to working on my Internet business, get down to part-time so I can live my life in a way that I find satisfying – the non-busy way. I know this lesson. I know it well. And so I continued my quest for part-time. I didn’t want to lose the hotel-gig. I love it. And, so far I’m making great progress. I should be down to part-time within two weeks. It’s been about a month of talking to various managers and patiently letting them know what I need and letting them figure out how to make it work. They gave me today off because someone was available to take the shift and they are actually working on transitioning me to part-time. So today I write and it feels great.

I’m confident that I’ll have the part-time hours in place very soon. And I’m excited to live this new schedule and learn what I need to do differently to feel good, feel happy, and feel fulfilled in whatever I’m doing. I’m excited to adjust to a new place so that I can once again live, learn and adjust again.

Related posts:

1. How To Win At Quitting
2. I Love What I Do
3. Looking Back At 2010
4. How You Can Save Good Dyke Porn
5. The Intern Becomes The Master