Abandoned Spaces Follow-Up

I found another one!

Abandoned Spaces

Listen to this while you read:

I love abandoned spaces. There's something super cool and romantic to me about exploring and finding beauty in a place that someone else wrote off! So it made me happy the other day when I was working and we ran across this platform that had been hit really hard by Katrina and had essentially been left to the elements. It looked cool to me and it was really foggy outside so I felt isolated (which is great when you've been living around five other guys for the past two weeks), like I was off exploring just by myself. The whole thing was dilapidated and all the fixtures and pipes (and sometimes the ground) were rusting off.

Here are some of the pictures I took while I was there:

There was an old office sitting on a bridge halfway between two of the platforms. It looked like no one had been in there since the hurricane, everything just the way they left it before the wind and and rain took their toll. On the door were a few standard signs including this:

You see silly signs like this all over the oil fields but this one ended up being rather ironic when you opened the office door. Trash and binders littered the floor while the desk looked like it had been through, well... a hurricane. It was cool thinking I may have been the first one to go in there since the storm. The floor tiles were fading and cracked, leaving holes in some of the ground open to the hundred foot drop to the ocean below.

Sometimes it's tough to find enjoyment and solitude when working away from home, so I'm glad I found this place. I figured I'd share it and maybe spread some joy your way!

Here's a link to an article I like about other abandoned spaces. I really love the Detroit, Chernobyl and City Hall Subway photos.

Bye for now, friends. Hopefully I'll run into some other cool stuff out here and be able to share it with you!

Zach

New Job, Letters, Roadtrip

So this is my first post since I’ve gotten a job. On the job front, it’s pretty awesome so far. I get to spend time offshore working outdoors and I like the people I work with. I’ve answered questions about it ad nauseum so I’ll go ahead and direct you to the company website so you have an idea what I do: www.stoprust.com (of course I’ll be happy to answer more questions if you have them).

So much of the three months of my life between graduation and finding a job were dominated by the search that it was essentially the only thing on my mind. I sort of subconsciously thought that if I got a job then everything would fall into place. So far this hasn’t been the case. In fact, rather the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have a job… Really happy. But in this, another transitional period in my life, I’m trying to figure out how to properly balance work and everything else.

This brings me to the point of my post.

I’ve never been wonderful about keeping up with friends and this newfound lack of time is making it even easier to let active communication fall by the wayside. To combat this, I’m making a goal to (when physically possible) write three letters a week to friends and family so as to better keep in touch. I’m gonna start hassling people (see: you) for mailing addresses soon so you may as well save yourself some trouble and message/text/email me your address now.

Following the need to achieve balance in my life by maintaining relationships I’m finding a need to spend what money I am making on stuff that matters to me. Things and stuff have never been a huge interest for me so I’m looking to spend my money on experiences. I want to travel. I want to go all over the US and eventually abroad. This is where you come in again. A nifty way to merge friends and travel is to travel with friends. The roadtrip I took with Sam, Patrick and Jimmie through Colorado was one of the cooler experiences in my short life and also relatively inexpensive. I want to start planning a road trip for this coming summer and I want people to go with and I want suggestions for places to go. I’ll be hassling people about suggestions and RSVPs relatively soon so, again, just save yourself the trouble of being hunted down and respond! To got you in the mood, here are some pics from the last roadtrip:

Sam

Jimmie

Me

We liked jumping off rock pictures a lot. You know why? 'Cause they're awesome.

Didn't have any of Pat jumping off a rock so that's a picture of him staring death in the face overlooking a wicked canyon. Notice the happy smile. Nerves of steel, that one.

Hopefully with these two steps I’ll end up moving closer to having proper balance. Anyone reading with other good suggestions for balancing work and play, please let me know. I’m always interested to hear advice and the perspectives of others.

Anyone living in Houston, for the love of all that is holy, let me know you live here. Besides my Mom and my sister I only know two or three people that are around. Everyone else, get ready, you’re getting letters and/or personal visits sometime in the near future.

<3s

Zach

I'm Afraid...

So I was listening to this song and I decided it was time to write again. It's been a while but I guess I've been busy so I don't feel so bad.

I can't say that this song links so very directly to this post, I'm not afraid of everyone, I love you all very dearly. I am, however, in a near constant state of fear that no one I know (even those close to me) is really aware of. I've been feeling that I need to be more open lately and I have trouble relating feelings directly to other people so this was the best I could come up with.

I am deathly afraid of failure, I am also mortified at the thought of the unknown. As you can imagine this is a terrible combination for a soon to be college graduate without a job waiting for him when he finishes. I constantly find myself fearing that I won't be good enough and no one will hire me and everyone I know will think I'm a failure because I can't get a job. I'm afraid because I don't have any idea what's going to happen at the time when I graduate (as I write this sentence that is exactly 16 days, 9 hours and 57 minutes).

I don't want this fear to define my life, for the next 2+ weeks 'til graduation or for the rest of my life. I want to have peace with the uncertainty of my future and peace with the understanding that a job is not who I am. So much of the last three and a half years of my life has been focused on getting a job when graduation arrives that I've convinced myself that a job is my goal but that's not entirely true. I feel that the job I will hopefully get in the near future will be a part of my life but it will not define me as a person. I will not be my job. With that understanding I have to be at peace with what is both a relieving and somewhat uncomfortable truth: whether I get a job soon or not doesn't alter who I am. No matter how much of my recent focus has been on honing job skills and writing resumes the job I may or may not get does not encompass everything that is me.

Someday I hope to get to a point where I can wholeheartedly understand this concept. I want to be able to be content whether I'm earning a six figures or mopping floors for minimum wage but I'm not at that point in my life right now.

Looking back on this I'm not sure there's any resolution here... and maybe there never will be. I'm also not looking for pity or for comfort but I think it's important that people who care about me know that I'm afraid. Anybody else?

Interesting quotations from The Quiet American

Listen to this while you read:

A few quotations that I found interesting in The Quiet American by Graham Greene.

"It takes a long time before we cease to feel proud of being wanted. Though God knows why we should feel it when we look around and see who else is wanted too."

"To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour---the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two."

"The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in body and mind to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation."

Continuation/Evolution from May 25th

OK, so I really haven't written anything of substance here in a long time. That being said don't let my last statement trick you into believing I'll be writing something of substance this time. Last time I wrote about the brevity of the human experience and how grateful I am for everyone that's been a part of my experience so far. Continuing on this theme I have a quote from a book a friend recommended to me that hit me pretty hard. It may not be the same for everyone but I feel like sharing it just in case:

"Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke."

This is an exchange between the ghost of Mozart and Harry Haller, a character in the book "Steppenwolf" by Herman Hesse. At the time I read this I feel I was taking life and time perhaps a little too seriously. Not necessarily in everyday life---if you know me you know that I'm never "serious" unless I'm absolutely forced to be so---but in my conceptual views of life. I was disappointed in myself for the ways in which I sometimes "waste" time and struggled with the concept of exchanging time for money (working any job). All in all maybe I wasn't considering things in a light enough manner this summer? I've heard before that "life is too important to be taken seriously" but never really gave it too much thought.

This post is less of a finished work and more of a vehicle through which I hope to foster discussion here and with my friends/family so lemme know what you think.

Placeholder

This is one of the most pure things I've ever heard.

In the future I'm going to finish collecting all these thoughts and throw another blog atcha. For night now, this post serves as a placeholder to remind me of what I want to write.