Tag Archives: life

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We’re too young for this nonsense.

Before I start here, I just want to say that this is not a writing blog post. It’s a little more personal than that, but it’s an interesting story and not the sort of story you can make up, so I’m going to toss it out there.

Yesterday, while I was at work, I learned that an old friend from college had passed away suddenly in her sleep. I’m 37 and she was 36. This sort of thing just doesn’t happen to people of our age, does it? I mean, when I’m in my 80s, well yeah, that shit is going to happen. It does when you get old. It still sucks, but it’s also a part of life, it’s just not something you expect when you’re in your mid 30s. My friends are still having kids for crying out loud.

When I first read the texts I thought it was maybe another famous person. It didn’t register that it should be the person that I had known by that name. Nope. It was one in the same. Now, I wasn’t close friends with her, and neither was my wife. We hung out, had coffee and chatted – the usual stuff you do in college. My wife’s history with her went back further into high school. Now, none of this alone is so poignant or significant. After all, we live in a sparsely populated state. The saying runs something like: If you don’t know someone, you know someone that does. To wit, I once visited former Governor Bill Scheffield’s house to help him with a computer problem, and attended a funeral with former governor Tony Knowles, I even once attended a 4th of July parade where I was obligated to shake Sarah Palin’s hand, and had her dad as a substitute teacher more than once. So, to know someone who has passed away is not, in and of itself, an unusual thing here. What makes this so absolutely disturbing is the following story:

Before my wife and I started dating, at the age of 19, she was trying to get my attention. She stalked me, invited me up to her room to check out her Christmas lights, and asked a friend and I to join her for dinner. I’m an idiot, and so none of this really struck me as interested. What finally did it was the Symphony. I was at dinner with the young woman that would some-day be my wife and her friend. They were chatting comfortably and I was in a stupor of exhaustion due to some very intense and competitive nights stealing wooden pallets from teams in other dormitories for our annual bonfire party (we won that year BTW). Anyhow, my someday wife’s friend turned to her and said, I can’t make it to the symphony this weekend, sorry. My someday wife turned to me without missing a beat and asked ‘I have an extra ticket, do you want to go?’ Naturally, I assumed that I was only being asked in order to use up a spare ticket. When my someday-wife arrived to pick me up, she was wearing a dress. In retrospect, this was not a shot across the bow, but a full broad-side. I only know this because getting my wife into a dress these days requires an assurance of a $300 romantic night on the town. Even then, it’s a debate. In any case, the symphony date was the first of many and here we are nearly 20 years later. That, however, is not the point of the story. What is the point of the story is that the woman who died in her sleep yesterday was the very same who had given up her ticket in what I was, and still am, sure was one of the best wing-woman plays of all time.

How is it that the young-woman who helped get my wife and I together could end up dead in her sleep? I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense, and I know that’s life, it’s full of those sorts of things. I still don’t have to like it though do I? Anyhow, I know you’re not around to hear it anymore, but thanks Katie, you bailed on your friend at precisely the right moment in our lives once, I just wish I’d thought to say so sooner.

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Time for a major life decision

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Today I got the phone call. It was precisely the call I’ve been hoping to get for the past couple of weeks. A job offer. My spirits sank a little when we started talking money, it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but generally what I expected. Before the end of the day, we got to a place that I consider fair and reasonable. To be clear, in terms of overall compensation, it’s a pay-cut, no doubt about it, but the size and nature of that cut has been agonized for some weeks now and I’ve concluded that other aspects of the job and other long-term strategies make up for it – I’m not going to go into details. Realistically, it’s the sort of thing we can cope with. Not only that, after having met the individuals I’d be working with and hearing more about the project, I got pretty excited about the job. Not only does it sound like a tremendous opportunity, but it’s going to be a new and interesting challenge that I want to do. It’s the sort of thing I want to get neck deep into and try to do something brilliant. Right now, as I write this blog, the offer is sitting in my e-mail inbox awaiting a signature. All I need to do is print, sign, send it back, and make arrangements with my current employer.

The problem?

Possibly the best way to describe the problem is the question: Am I being selfish? The truth is that I want to do this job, I want a change, for so many reasons, and I look forward to not having to worry about the future of my job on an annual basis, and even the tiny ill-lit cubicle that I will undoubtedly be locked into for 8 hours a day, but is it fair to my family?

At the moment, I work 3 days/week at home, which means I’m there for the kids when they get out of school and they can be at home most of the summer. I worry about making it back to town before the after-school care closes down, and about homework. What will dinner look like if I’m not home at 4:30 to cook it up? There will be much less leave time available, so I won’t be able to take two weeks in the winter and two weeks in the summer and still have time to take off a day here and there to take care of home stuff.

Everyone I’ve spoken to so far has advocated for me to follow-through and take the job -Even my wife. This is advice I’d like to just take without the heartburn. I want desperately to be excited about this change, yet here I am stressing out about it. My current situation is so incredibly comfortable as far as home-life is concerned that I worry I’m making the right decision, even with the risk of layoffs or massive pay-cuts, loss of pension, and so-on in the next year or two. My current job is NOT a bad one, I’m treated extremely fairly and compensated well. The long-term prospects have little to do with those I work with now, and more to do with the decline of oil prices.

To bring this around to writing, as this is the point of the blog anyhow, will this effect my writing? Yes, a bit. I like to have off a few days here and there to write without harassment, and that will happen a lot less, but the more I focus on getting to the publishing of my first novel, the more I realize this is a hobby and always will be. It’s something I should enjoy, and if I do, I’ll work it in.

Anyhow. I don’t know if I’ve got much more to say about this just now. I have until about lunchtime tomorrow to make a final decision, perhaps someone will talk me out of it, or I’ll be convinced I’m making the right decision for myself and my family. I dunno. Either way, the next blog post will be an impassioned rant on word processors (or to be more precise – a pointless rant about how little it seems to matter what you choose.) I will also probably blog my decision at some point – this is a big deal for me.