Ponderings and Musings

This past weekend Earl and I attended the graduation party of my cousin’s daughter. Naturally the question that was asked the most often was where she was going to go to college and what she planned on studying. She is going to become a pet psychologist. I give her credit for knowing what she wants to do with her life. I wish her luck.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m odd or what but at 40 years old I don’t know that I’ve settled in to what I want to do with the rest of my life. I probably have but then again I’ve changed careers a couple of times: I worked for a computer company. I’ve been a radio DJ. I work in technology again. I’ve worked with the developmentally disabled. I went to school for music education. I went to school for civil engineering. Don’t get me wrong, I like what I do. I like it a lot. And I’m pretty confident that I could do this for the rest of my life. I might need a change of scenery along the way but all in all my gig is pretty good.

I sometimes wonder if we put too much pressure on those entering adulthood by expecting them to know what they want to do for the rest of their life and then expect them to pay bucketloads of money in education, only to find out that it isn’t their cup of tea 10 years later. I know people that have changed careers as many times as I have and they’re very happy with their life. When I was in college there were several in my classes that had no idea what they were getting themselves into as civil engineers, it just sounded good in the college catalog so they signed up for it. They did their best but the lack of enthusiasm was apparent. They were told that they had to go to college and that was that. If they had just been given the chance to “find themselves”, I’m pretty confident that they wouldn’t have chosen the career path they were on.

Now, I’m not knocking my cousin’s daughter’s decision to become a pet psychologist. No, not at all. She knows what she wants to do and I think that’s wonderful! My point is that I don’t think we can expect each and every person to know what they want to do out of school. The New York State education system tends to test the hell out of every student these days and it also places what I feel to be unrealistic expectations on some students. The system sets many up for failure. Not everyone is hard-wired for continuing education. I’ve met many people that could barely write their name legibly and perform simple algebra, but they could assemble, disassemble and reassemble a V8 engine in a different car in less than a day. They did horribly in school and ended up not getting a diploma because of a fear of testing. However, they were given some room, a second chance via a GED and they now own a very successful auto repair shop.

Some people can clearly see the path that lies ahead. Others find twists and turns along the way. I think the most important thing is to recognise individuality and to celebrate that. If society allowed more of this exploration along the way, perhaps we’d have a happier society today.

This morning Earl was off to work early. He preceded his usual good-bye morning kiss with a loud, booming announcement, “You don’t look a day over 40!” Since it was 5:30 in the morning I was still very much asleep when he shared his observation.. It was then that I remembered that I’m 40 now. And I’m pretty much over it. Let’s get on with it.

I’m using the occasion as a launchpad for a couple of ideas that I’ve been floating around in my head again. I’m attempting to be a vegetarian again. This is my third attempt at being a vegetarian; I’m hoping that the third time is a charm. Becoming vegetarian is an attempt to better my eating habits though we all know that a vegetarian can easily eat unhealthy by doing things such as eating an entire bag of Doritos and a pound of potato salad for supper.

Not that I’ve done that before or anything.

I’m thinking of trying a recipe for a barbecue salad. It was basically a tossed salad that you barbecued, hence the name. I saw it on the Food Network years ago and I jotted it down somewhere. I just need to locate my notes or Google it again.

We spent yesterday at a family reunion of sorts, my cousin’s daughter graduated from high school and it was her graduation party. It was very enjoyable; we hung out with all of my city cousins and the rest of the family. Even though it was raining like crazy for much of the afternoon we still made the best of it under the tents my uncle had put up earlier in the morning.

So now I’m doing to work thing with a good attitude. Life is good. Regardless of the number attached to the year.

It is currently 79 degrees fahrenheit. I should be in bed, I have to get up early tomorrow. I feel tired. I’m "fading" somewhat in front of the computer. Still, sweat beads on selected spots on my body. This has kept me from hitting the hay.

Tomorrow a cold front should make an appearance in our area. It will be preceded by thunderstorms starting around 2:00 a.m. This will make for a busy day as Mr. Telephone Man tomorrow.

I should get some sleep.

Someday we’ll buy an air conditioner.

Many of my vivid childhood memories are pre-1977 which was the year we moved into the new house. Before moving we lived in a 10×55 mobile home with a 10×50 addition that my Dad had built shortly after my sister was born. The mobile home sat on a piece of property next to my grandparents. It was in the middle of a cow and horse pasture. Two sides of our back lawn were surrounded by electric fence. My Dad built the new house, a two-story colonial that he still lives in today, across the street from the trailer. Aside from some help from the two guys that worked at the family contracting business, my uncle and my grandfather, my Dad built the house pretty much on his own. It took him two years.

Four people living in a small mobile home was an interesting experience. During the summer we’d have one more living with us; one of my city cousins would come up for some “fresh country air” for a week. There was one bathroom and if we needed to go when someone was in there we’d run across the lawn to my grandparents and use their guest bath near the side entrance to their house. The addition to the trailer allowed for us to have a laundry room, but it was small and only had room for the dryer. The washing machine was in the bathroom. My parents’ bedroom was in the addition and utilized the original back door to the trailer. I don’t know how they had sex because the door was rarely closed. There was a gun rack built into the wall. The third room of the addition was the living room. The old living room in the original trailer became the dining room. It had a small round table that barely sat the four of us. My sister and I shared a bedroom, complete with bunk beds that took up the length of the north wall. Mom once tried to give my sister her own room by splitting the bunks and using the small bedroom behind the furnace, but it wasn’t long enough for a bed. Only a crib would fit in there and she had outgrown that years ago.

I like to think that living in the trailer kept us a close family as there wasn’t really any place for us to escape away from each other. Summer afternoons were spent romping around the farm; I’d hop up on a tree stump and jump into the fenced in pasture and do my own version of running with the bulls. The cows didn’t care if we were in the pasture, but once in a while a bull would get cranky about it. If I yelled “boo” in his direction really loud, he’d stop heading towards me. I’d then run to another tree stump in the pasture and jump back over the fence to my own side.

One of my favorite memories from the trailer was a birthday party for my sister and I. Our birthdays are five days apart and we shared a family birthday party. My city cousins and aunts would come up with Grandma and Aunt Jenn; it was one of the rare times that my city cousins would mingle with my country cousins, who lived relatively close. We’d have a cake that my Mom made, complete with those pure sugar candy letters and numbers from the Acme.

When I think back to the happiest times of my childhood, it’s often to a time when we lived in the trailer.

So today is the first the test of my decision to return to work full-time. You see, I am working the “early shift” today and tomorrow, and that involves getting up at 5:30. I am not a morning person.

Tom decided to throw his sense of humour around the bedroom by caterwauling at 5:00 a.m., just in case I decided not to sleep until the alarm went off. He is such a funny guy, I wonder if he is successful on the kitty-cat stand-up circuit.

Getting up before 9 a.m. is a chore for me, getting up at 5:30 without being a grumpy, growling bear is the ultimate test in restraint for me. I’m working through my morning routine backwards just to keep the whole thing interesting and attentive.

I can always sleep at my desk later in the day.

Flickr Link.

I’ve worked it out so that I work three days a week until July 10. Then it’s four days a week until Labor Day and then I’m full time after that. How’s that for setting a nice summer schedule? It is the social season, you know.

I’ve made several big decisions this week: a full-time job, school on hold, etc. I could go on and on about how my head is spinning but to be honest it’s not. I always listen to my gut and my gut says I did good. I feel great. I feel remarkably stress free, though I know that’ll change once I get back into the on call schedule again in September. The great thing is that since all the positions in my group are now filled the on call schedule is manageable with my turn coming up once every five weeks. I can live with that. They have added incentives to on call to make it a little more bearable. I see gadgets in my future (after the debt is paid down).

Ironically, as soon as I sealed the deal with my boss with a handshake, all hell broke loose in the Network Operations Center and it hasn’t slowed down at all. The controlled chaos came back at full-tilt and quite frankly I was reveling in it. Instead of one or two customers losing their internet connection at a time, we had 60 to 70 dropping at once. No xtube in lots of offices this week!

Now I get to relax for Thursday and Friday. I have a few projects around the house I want to finish up. I might even run the vacuum cleaner from where Tom threw a plant at us at 4:00 a.m. this morning.

One of the reasons that I’m able to work part-time at my old position at the telephone company this summer is because a full-time position in the group recently opened up. I enjoy working for this local telecommunications company; it’s a family owned business that does it’s own thing in a very cookie-cutter world. That last point can occasionally be frustrating, but there’s a certain organised chaos in the atmosphere that I enjoy. I have mentioned before that I love the people in the group that I work in and this latest incarnation of staff seems very cohesive. I enjoy going to work.

I often say that when people tell me to look at the “big picture” they soon realise that I am not even looking at the same painting and sometimes I’m browsing a completely different wing of this proverbial art gallery. My “big picture” is often different than what other people see and I enjoy this quirky nature I have.

Over the past several weeks I have been re-evaluating my schooling and career aspirations. Thinking over my goals began early in the last fall semester; I was learning that I had a good chunk of schooling ahead of me: my two-year degree would get me a position that paid less than the job I had left, a four-year degree would get me in the ballpark and then I would have to do several years of working with the Department of Transportation or a consulting firm before I could take the required exams for the position that I was striving for. By then I would be in my late 40s and, as I sensed at a recent job interview, the industry is looking for young bucks and buckettes that they can shape into something wonderful and more importantly, long lasting. Couple my age with my lack of health insurance, an increasingly struggling economy and a retirement fund that wasn’t getting added to and a sense of responsibility (drat that common ‘big picture’) was starting to rattle it’s keys in my direction. Earl and I are doing fine financially but since I started school we’ve been playing it close. Contrary to the chaotic fiscal past of my youth, I don’t like having debt looming over our heads. You never know when the house of cards is going to come crashing down.

I threw my name in the hat for the full time position at my old job last week. As a person, both personally (of course) and professionally, I feel that I have grown considerably since I left the full time version of the gig one and a half years ago. I feel that I still have a lot to contribute to the team and to the company and I honestly miss my daily dabblings in technology. Things _happened_ at my old job whilst the position I aspired for appeared to move at the speed of flowing molasses.

So this morning I met with the department head who made me an offer I just couldn’t refuse. When I threw my name in the hat, I added some numbers to my slip of paper. Their numbers and my numbers surprisingly matched. And faster than Brett Somers can write “BOOBS” on her Match Game card, I strongly considered the position. “I’ll let you know in the morning, once I talk to the big guy.” (That would be Earl).

We had the talk tonight. Weighing the pros and cons, adding a few tears of love and punching a few numbers on the calculator on my iPhone¹ I’ve decided to become Mr. Telephone Man again. The position allows me to play with technology, pays the bills and more importantly, makes me happy. Some may think I’ve lost my mind completely by jumping back into the controlled chaos but I’m really excited about the opportunity. I’ll work part-time through the summer and then I’m back to full-time the day after Labor Day.

And as I moved from one painting to another in my separate gallery, I took a glance back at the painting I had been looking at for the past 18 months and saw my passion for that painting to be fully intact. Had I stared at that painting for too long, I have a feeling that the passion may have turned into “just a job”, destroying my inquisitive nature of discovering highways and construction projects and journeys across a smattering of countries.

I know I have made the right decision.

¹ Here is my obligatory iPhone reference on ‘iPhone 3G Day’.