Blog Entry: 8 Feeling Philosophical
July-August 2021
anx·i·e·ty
/aNGˈzīədē/ noun
'A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome'
And no, this is not in regards to moving to Canada, surprisingly that caused very low anxiety for me! This is a specific anxiety I have had since leaving Suzuki in 2008. My anxiety is the voice in my head trying to panic me, that I’m not going to achieve what I want, with enough time to enjoy it. Now hears the caveat. Yes, money gives freedom and can speed up my progress, not to mention buy lots of cool shit! But I had decided in my late teens chasing money did not guarantee happiness, something I still stand by today! To be clear, you can’t buy a chunk of happiness with money and in some cases it can alienate you form life if you allow it to. So, since leaving school I have been in the constant pursuit of happiness. School was not sunshine and rainbows and the pursuit of happiness, although a far harder conquest, I feel it more worthwhile!
Years ago, standing by my grandads’ bed the night he passed away, my head was consumed with one thing; ‘What had he regretted?’. Now before you call me pessimistic or morbid, I could have focused on what he was happiest about, or what he was going to miss, but the question of regret seemed far more important. Now obviously, I couldn’t ask him as he was gone, and being a non-religious person, he no longer exists. Instead, I turned the question on myself and challenged myself to figure out what I think is the thing I will regret most. This wasn’t a fast process but in the coming weeks I figured out an answer, one that to this day I feel more emphatically is the correct answer; we regret the things we don’t do, far more than the mistakes we made trying. I will explain. Yes, you may have made a bad decision at some point in your short existence, but at least you fucking tried! You got your ‘big man’ (or woman) trousers on and fucking tried! And you gave what you wanted a chance! Now it may be asking a girl out ……only for her to laugh straight in your face (thank you Katherine in year 11 at HRS coming down D block stairs). Or standing up to someone for pushing you that little bit too far, just to get more fight than you were ready for (Harry in front of school at the end of Year 9). Or snowboarding in a semi-blizzard when you had been warned not to and seriously injuring your shoulder, because you ran out of skill (me! All on me!! Switzerland, 2012). Whatever the outcome, at least I didn’t have to wonder what would have happened ‘if I had just tried’, possibly more importantly I learnt something from all the times I tried, and I hadn’t got the outcome I had hoped for. These examples I learnt if a girl rejected me, it’s not the end of the world. If someone beats you in a fight, next time be stronger, that’s on you! And if you go in under prepared for anything, expect to fall short.
So since around 19 (15 years ago) I have held true to this philosophy, for the most part. The only thing is, as the consequence of it not going to plan gets bigger, so does anxiety that occasionally creeps in. This brings me to July 25th, the week prior I had been told of a job at a new company that had just started up. This was thanks to Pam the lady with the awesome truck, and as of this morning I had handed my notice in at Dodge. Now yes, I did need a mechanics job to qualify under my visa, but I really wasn’t loving Dodge and I have a very strong philosophy ‘if you don’t like where you are, leave!’. I will be honest, I have many things I want to do now in Canada, and mechanics was something I thought I had left behind. But, out of the options, I had chosen to pick mechanics as my visa application route. This stood the most chance of success, after being told my commercial flight qualifications were classed as ‘on job training’ as fucking stupid as that sounds. I had kind of had hoped I would find a few years of consistency and maybe even enjoyment so I could save some money and get into a good position to start all the things I have in the pipeline. After Dodge, this became more and more unlikely! To be honest, with all the aspirations I have, mechanics was becoming an obstruction! But the new place looked very promising, and between the owners they were passionate and very business smart, so it seemed a good move. I will go as far as to say Shawn is one of the best bosses I’ve ever worked for!
Since our stuff had arrived, I had been chipping away at a plan, and first on the agenda was working out what our photography company would be called and trying to figure out when the right time to launch was. But after a little time thinking and talking with Jess we decided to stick with ‘DanF40 Group’ I had already designed the logo (after a few nights of self-teaching on Adobe illustrator) and I quite liked it as it wasn’t the normal generic mundane photography company name, like ‘Bob’s photography’ …. So now we had a name, Jess wanted business cards. This made sense, but we can be smarter than just a cardboard card, one that most people will take and lose in that impossible to access black hole of a space between their seat and the centre counsel in their car. I had seen one particular company on Facebook that kept coming up every 3rd fucking scroll and it’s a bamboo card that has a built in RF reader a QR code on the back and our logo on the front, and the idea is you tap it on someone’s phone, or they can read the QR code, and in two clicks we can exchange contact details and they have all our socials and website links. I had also taken to using my northern friend Paul’s dogs as guineapigs for all my new ideas for animal photography. On these walk’s we also tested out the business card on random people who had shown interest in us taking photos of Paul’s dogs, it worked well, and this all cemented the fact, we can’t wait any longer and we need to start this company sooner rather than later!
With the new garage job came no flat rate (!) and good money. This meant I could start to invest in more gear and even though it wasn’t everything at least it was progress, and this reduced some of the anxiety! I despise being in debt! No really, I have been spreadsheeting our finances for years, so I always know where I stand. The first months at Dodge had been financially hard, the lack of pay consistency had made planning very tricky. The only downside is that the new garage is by Calgary Zoo…… this meant my commute was now 2 hours a day and more fuel! This was less than ideal, and the mighty Outlander had now started to show its age and was starting to falter, random idle issues, a fucked battery and a worrying smell of fuel that would turn out to be a rusted fuel tank, not ideal. The workshop was cleaner, there was a higher demand for quality, which I had no issue with, and the Dodge philosophy of faster and cheaper was no more.
In my final week at Dodge, Freddy and I had arranged to go to Kananaskis upper lake with his future husband for a hike. Again, I used this as an opportunity for photos. Mochi, their dog was on top form, and I managed to get some nice photos. The scenery was impressive, less impressive was the unrelenting mosquitos when we visited the waterfalls halfway round. Now it made perfect sense to me that I would lose phone signal as we were hiking in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. Jess, however, had been repeatedly calling but just getting answerphone. About 4/5 in the afternoon, she had involved Paul in the man hunt ……who had managed to make her panic worse! So, its unsurprising that as leaving Kananaskis and regaining signal, my phone exploded with messages, missed calls and location requests. Before I could call my panic-stricken wife, she called me, I knew the conversation was going to be fun when she started with “where the fuck are you?” to which my reply of ‘in the car with Fred and Nhan’ appeared to not be the correct answer, as this only made her tone more angry. I then proceeded to explain I have been off grid and that’s why she couldn’t get me, Paul was now also calling me. After my wife burnt off her panic and worry by aggressively blaming me for not having signal and making her worry, she then asked how Fred was. I explained Fred was fine he and all in the car could clearly hear her as she was on speaker, by this time Fred was laughing heavily! He found her barrage questions and her blaming me for not having signal fucking hilarious. Jess went quiet at this point and in a soft tone and much quieter voice asked how long she had been on speaker; I informed her the whole call. She then proceeded to apologies to everyone from here to the moon, for her attack, none of which was necessary as it was quite obvious, she just got a little too worried, she is just a caring person.
So speedy update of the little things that happened. Jess got more squish mellows, I had the worst hair cut I’ve ever had, we got some Tiptree jam, I’m now in credit card debt thanks to the Outlander braking, buying THC in oil form is a lot cheaper, if you have an F150 don’t use steering fluid in your brake system, I want to get a Toyota Sequoia, I like Vietnamese food (thank you Vichy buying lunches) and I have no desire to ever buy an Eldorado!!
Next time, August 30th to the 30th of September 2021 I go to Banff Hot Springs with a Shanghai girl, Dani and Jess, I pass an exam and I get sweaty and run round a field with a load of men! Until next time my friends TTFN!
