Ponderings and Musings

I have always said that one should never work at a job that they don’t enjoy. That doesn’t mean that no one should do menial labor, because I know a lot of people who enjoy doing what others consider “grunt work”. I know that one of my most enjoyable jobs was working as a cashier for a large department store chain back in my early 20s, because you got to talk to a lot of people, it required a bit of skill “back in my day” (no scanning where I worked) and my curiosity was satisfied in two ways: the cash register was fun to try to crash once in a while and I got to see what people were buying.

I’m so strange.

After having such a magical long weekend, what with a wedding kicking it off and then the whole honeymoon thing in the fine City of New York, I wasn’t particularly excited about getting up at 5:30 this morning and driving the darkened roads for an hour to sit in a beige cubicle for eight hours, only to drive home another hour along a commute that is populated by slow moving vehicles, mainly horse drawn wagons that are getting crops from point A to point B. In fact, I had a little bit of a feeling of dread getting up this morning but I did my best to muster up an acceptable attitude and I did what we all have to do on a Monday morning.

So here I am, halfway through my work day and I have been congratulated by many on the legal marriage to my partner and I have told a few that no, I did not change my name, nor did he change his. We are still married though, and we have the paper to prove it. Now we get to play with HR and do the whole married health benefits thing. That’ll be fun.

I have found that the sense of dread was unwarranted. Like many people, I imagined work would be more chaotic than it actually is today and I thought that I would have this sense of being overwhelmed, which I don’t. Before leaving for work this morning, Earl suggested I find a way to meditate. This probably wouldn’t be a good thing to do when driving along the one hour commute amongst the buggies in the dark, so instead I tuned into a non-committal radio station on Sirius/XM (the 40s on 4 for those that are curious) and I just kind of found my way to a good place in my head. It took a little effort but I found it and I’m finding that it’s much more enjoyable than that place I was when I was dreading going to work this morning. I guess the sounds of the 40s music and the effort to make my mood better helped me find my center today.

I know many people that make their work their life. And that is awesome for them. While overall I enjoy what I do very much, I consider myself to be more than just my job and I like to explore all the dimensions of this multi-dimensional. multi-faceted slew of interests and quirks that I have.

Once I find a good balance of work and play, I find that the grind isn’t so bad after all.

The last 1/4 of my daily commute home usually involves the Thruway. This is by choice and quite honestly, while I prefer to drive the back roads for all of my commute, there is a part of me that wants to get home as quickly as possible, and driving home on the Thruway allows me this luxury. Especially since driving on the Thruway means that I won’t have to deal with the endless construction going on along the newer parts of the Interstate System near our house. Construction crews aren’t working on the bridge that should be condemned; instead they are working on the bridge that was built 15 years ago.

I think I got off my original topic.

As I was driving along the Thruway this evening, I noticed that every vehicle that I encountered, aside from the tractor trailers, had all of the windows closed. Since it was in the mid 70s, I can only assume that the occupants of the vehicles were enjoying an air conditioned ride as they sped along at speeds exceeding the posted limit.

On the other hand, I had taken the top off the Jeep and I was enjoying the wind blowing me all over the place and the sunshine that was filling the Jeep (at least until sunset, which happened right before I got home).

I’m not a fan of air conditioning. I never really have been, but then again, I’ve never lived in an area where it was considered mandatory so my opinion could be changed if we ever relocated to a warmer climate. But as a person born and bred right here in Upstate New York, I can tell you that for me, fresh air trumps air conditioned comfort any day of the week. I would rather feel the warm breezes from outside with a tinge of “fresh country air” over the sterile, cool air blowing from your local air conditioning unit. Enjoying the ride like I did today made me think of how things were before everything was air-conditioned, or as I like to think of it, sterilized for your comfort. Perhaps I hearken back to the day before air conditioning was considered a necessity, but I feel much more in touch with everything that’s going on around me when I can feel the breeze, smell the scents and embrace the warmth of the sun.

You can ride all you want in your air conditioned vehicle, I’m certainly not going to stop you, but I invite you to roll down the windows, set down the mobile device and feel the world around you sometime. It might make your smile broader and your heart sing louder.

I know it has the effect on me.

I’m typing this blog entry on the virtual iPad keyboard today, so please excuse any gross spelling or grammatical errors and email me if you need further clarification.

Work is a hoot today. Systems are struggling, training classes have commenced and conference calls are happening in all parts of the globe. People are coming into my cube looking for answers or a question (sometimes it’s hard to tell which) and I’m looking at them with a dopey grin and giving them something they want to hear.

You see, we are getting married is week, on Thursday night to be exact, and that’s where my focus is this week. Yes, work is important, but all I can see if that phenomenal moment that I thought would never happen and the long weekend in New York afterwards.

When I get back on Monday I will be a legally married man with all eyes on the ball in the busy game, but for now, my eyes are looking forward to seeing the other eyes I know so well as I say the words, “I do.”.

This blog has been in it’s second decade for a few months and the other night I entertained myself by reading some of the older posts I’ve splattered up here on the intertubes. (What an odd choice of words?!?)

Earl doesn’t really enjoy it when I do this sort of thing (the reading past entries, not the splattering) because I tend to crack myself up with my writing at times and I enjoy engaging in howls of laughter. It’s like a form of therapy for me and in this day and age of political unrest, high prices, unemployment and ending of the free glasses campaign at McDonalds, lord knows we all need howls of laughter in our lives.

Speaking of the therapeutic nature of this, I have to admit that I do find a bit of stress relief by writing in the blog and though it has taken a conscious effort to maintain the blog, especially in this day and age of spurts of wit via Twitter, Facebook and the like (again with the weird word selection). When I take my focus off of the world and into the world that I am writing about as I plod along on my keyboard du jour, I find that the knots in my head unwind a little bit, my left eyebrow cocks up as I concentrate (I just noticed that) and that a smile forms on my face, even when I’m writing about unfortunate topics such as taxes, the dismal selection of presidential candidates and DMV clerks that should be named “Donut Breath”™.

I noticed that my older entries were a little more outpouring as to what was going on in my head. Perhaps I was a little less rough around the edges back then and I didn’t think anyone was really reading my entries, so I would share some things that I’m not sure I would share today. Ironically, these posts seemed to be my better written entries. Maybe I had a little more time to sit down and write instead of sitting in the Jeep 60 miles from home on a daily exercise called “lunch hour”. There was a certain amount of therapy in those writings that I think I miss and I need to find a way to get back to. I sense a little more, well, something, in those earlier entries that I need to seek out again. I’ve always been complaining that I need to slow down a bit, perhaps I need to realize this and actually do it.

A couple of weeks ago I moved my habit of writing down my dreams from a notebook to a new Mac and iOS app called “Day One”. The transition has been good and I’m finding myself writing in it more than I expected to. Apparently there’s stuff inside of me that’s bubbling to get out and writing is an outlet for it.

Perhaps I should stop worrying about what people think about what I write and post (not that I think many read this anyways) and start just writing again.

As I write this blog entry, there’s a Big Event going on somewhere important. It’s all about the latest incarnations of the iPhone. I hope they announce the immediate availability of iOS 5, because my beta testing has not been as smooth as I would like it to have been. It’ll be golden though when we have the real version.

I’m not following the Apple event closely, though, because it’s my lunch hour (albeit later than normal) and quite frankly I’m enjoying relaxing a bit and watching a pair of blue jays jumping around on the grass along side the parking lot. They are taking turns darting in and out of a dense group of trees; I suspect there’s a nest in there somewhere.

The blue jays seem rather bold but I don’t want to risk taking a picture and scaring them off. Their presence is bringing a sort of zen to my lunch hour and I kind of like that. Besides, the photo would be taken with an undoubtedly by-now outdated iPhone and I don’t want to risk the shame of being shunned by a passerby for having outdated equipment.

I have been finding a lot of ways to find stress in my life lately. Work is busy and trying to meet lofty goals is stressing me out a little bit. I found ways to relax this weekend and oddly enough, working on one of my work projects yesterday helped me relax a little bit. Milestones are important. Ticking an item off a list makes me feel better. I wish I could work from home more often as I am much more productive in my own habitat.

My customary bout of Sunday night insomnia made an appearance last night and as I stared at the ceiling and flipped around in the bed a few dozen times, I came to the realization that I just need to chill. This helped me catch one more hour of sleep before it was time to get up and start this thing we called Monday morning. The pleasant feelings of this realization have continued on through the day. Work is going better because somehow I found a way to keep the stress levels down.

Maybe I worry too much. I should just remember to breathe.

So the folks at Bank of America have decided to start charging $5.00 a month if you use your debit card for purchases. If I do the math correctly, that’s $60.00 a year, or in layman’s terms, a tank of gas.

Quite frankly, I think the folks at Bank of America are a bunch of bastards. Because now that they’re doing this, the rest of the banks will jump on board and start doing it too. I’m so happy that we bailed them out of bankruptcy.

I asked Earl if he had any interest in moving us to a local bank. I was surprised when he agreed. Since we have two sets of accounts at BOA and HSBC (the world’s local bank!), there will be some legwork involved with direct deposits and the like so I’m going to wait until HSBC’s planned desertion of the area is completed and then we are going to move everything to a more local bank. Maybe a credit union. Maybe we’ll just start paying everything with money orders or PayPal or something. I just love the fact that the banks have been pushing to move everything to debit and credit cards and now they’re going to start socking us with extra fees.

It’s time to start stuffing the mattress with the millions.

I just deleted the blog entry that originally occupied this space because it was overly indicative of my frustration level today. Writing down my thoughts sort of made me feel better but I didn’t really want to burden my gentle reader with the tedium.

I have been chastised in the past for commenting that things in the U.S. seemed better in “days gone by”. I’m talking about the days when people dressed up to board an airplane or wore a full set of clothes at the dinner table and actually sat at the dinner table. Folks remind me that the gays present at those dinner tables usually had a fake girlfriend or wife and they hid in the closet. Maybe that’s why so many people drank. But honestly, I don’t give a flip about that part of it, we all know that we’ve made progress in the diversity department and that’s great. What I’m talking about is that people had class back then. There was respect. You were nice to each other. “Thank you.” “You’re welcome.” Cashiers counted the change back to you without handing you a bunch of wadded up bills stacked helter-skelter. There was conversation between people. Quality trumped quantity in your work most everytime. “Made In the USA” meant something.

I must be getting old.

I have this unsettled feeling going on with my chi that has me in a little bit of a weird funk. This isn’t an entirely bad thing because it’s good for the soul to have some uncertainty in your life, but this unsettled feeling is a bit, well, unsettling.

Last night I had one of my elevator dreams again. The elevator dreams vary but there’s usually a common theme, things are happening that I can’t control. At times the elevator starts to rotate and I have to try to keep up. Other times the elevator opens to an abandoned floor where the halls have been replaced by wall-less corridors and if I fall off the resulting beam I’m going to plunge somewhere that isn’t good. Last night the elevator just stopped and I was stuck but as long as I kept contact with someone on my cell phone I was going to be okay. Well, actually, as long as I kept in contact with Earl on my cell phone I was going to be okay. I think the symbolism in that part is self-evident.

I hate the elevator dreams because they’re just amplifying what I am really feeling in this world and last night was no different. Work is getting busy and I’m feeling overwhelmed, but hearing a few words from Earl, even though he’s out of town, makes it better. The elevator dreams have gotten to the point where I even say out loud, in the dream, “oh God not this again.” I do that a lot, realize I’m dreaming when I’m still in the dream and then try to steer where it’s going, but the psyche usually wins. Sometimes it doesn’t though and I wrestle control of my own elevator dream and jump out bionically or something. There’s even a ch ch ch ch ch sound.

I wish I could do that when the impetus for the dream is really happening so I could just avoid the unsettling elevator dreams all together.

I’d be such a gas on an analyst’s couch.