Category: grindstone

All about breadwinning.

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let’s not trivialize

I’m really bothered by my posting frequency.  I used to get four days a week, now I’m getting two or maybe three.

Work shoots some nights in the foot, making even a limping attempt hard.  Other nights I simply re-prioritize.  Maybe playing a game with Sharaun and Keaton or reading instead (reading consistently is such a fleeting thing for me that I choose to feed it first).  Tonight it’s work; although the 8:30pm meeting isn’t as “disruptive” as some of my later ones.  It’s OK; I’m earning a wage and all and that’s a good thing.  One of the many other nights, I spent outlining.  I want to write a book; have wanted to for some time.  I’ll probably never finish, but I got an idea.  A friend of ours is doing it, or maybe has done it by now, I find that encouraging.  All my ideas were limp, but then I got inspired.

Did you know that Cohen, our other kid, the new one with the still-soft skin and still-soft hair and still-toothless gums, can roll over now?  He can.  Been doing it, like a boss, for about a week. I think that this is, probably, a bit “behind schedule” as as American parents say.  Although I find the notion of child development adhering to a strict “schedule” somewhat presumptuous and maybe a little insulting (can babies be insulted?).  I’ll tell you what, Cohen himself could care less; I’m confident of that.  You get into that kid’s brain and you read his thoughts as he hears you say to another mom, “Yeah, he’s rolling over now.  A bit behind, I know,” and you’d hear that kid think, “‘Behind’ what, fool?  I just rolled over, did you not see that?  This is the greatest single achievement of my life.”  So let’s not trivialize; my kid is amazing.

Goodnight.

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the daily betrayal

This morning I watched some old Pink Panther cartoons with Keaton before work.  It was awesome.  It was an awesome feeling, almost like when I was a little kid.

It was early enough that the light was that kind of all-over light where the sun isn’t up it’s just all-around.  It was foggy or just morning cloudy; the light diffused through all that water in the air and just was.  Keaton was in her Tangled PJs, blue bottoms with flowers and a big Rapunzel on the top, and I was in boxers and a white undershirt, beard still wet from the shower (no hair left to be damp, it’s the beard’s job now).  Sharaun and Cohen were still asleep.  Keaton cuddled up to me and jammed her feet under my thighs to keep warm.  I tucked her hair behind her ear (for some reason I love doing that) and patted her knee and laughed with her.

We watched about ten minutes together.  I didn’t want to go to work.  I could’ve made a pot of coffee and turned off my phone so the rapid-fire click, click, click of e-mail didn’t remind me of my delinquency.

At 7:50am I left it all.  My daughter, Pink Panther, the couch, the everywhere light of morning.  Left it all and went to work.

Again.

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providence is something

Keaton got into kindergarten.  Most of the fears I wrote about yesterday were unfounded.

Turns out there are schools in the district who do the “queue-up” thing ala Zeppelin tickets, but Keaton’s future school isn’t one.  Sharaun simply swung by early, grabbed a registration packet, brought it home and filled it out, and returned it.  Turns out the school was fine with a passport instead of a birth certificate, and our city utility bill proved residence in place of the county one they wanted (but that we didn’t have because I stopped paper billing on every bill that would allow me to).  In the end, I believe Sharaun walked away feeling redeemed and good about the whole thing.  Sure, maybe we weren’t strictly prepared, but it all worked out.  Providence is something we’re certainly never wanting.

I haven’t written because work has been crushing.  Sharaun calls around 6pm and asks me if I’m going to be working much later.  I respond, quite honestly yet also facetiously, “I could work until midnight and still not be caught up for tomorrow.”  And I could.  I’m behind.  Maybe a full eight hours worth from where I’d like to be.  It’s funny how the brain prioritizes stuff; in my case almost subconsciously.  Things naturally drift to the bottom, stay there until someone brings them up again.  Our inherent inefficiency; our inability to multi task.  I know I write about the ebb and flow of stress at work, write about it a lot… but sometimes, when I cast my mind back over the day and what there is to write about, if nothing “abstract” pops up I’m left with either not writing at all (last night) or writing about what dominated the day.  So I do.

Goodnight.

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happily coasting

Looks like I’m mending.  Not quite 100% yet, demonstrated by just how tired work today made me.

I mean it’s nine o’clock at night and I’m already feeling an hour past bedtime.  I’m here listening to David Crosby’s stellar debut effort, If I Could Only Remember My Name. I think about hearing this album back in 1971 and thinking, “Dang, Crosby’s got it man.  Out of the ashes and here comes the phoenix.  This guy’s got the seventies locked; gonna wow us through another decade.”  How sad would it have been to then not see another album for something like two decades.

Two decades where the man buried himself in cocaine (don’t call it “crack” friends!, that’s for the poor folk;  freebase is puuuure!), made no records, and let himself waste away.  How disappointing to think what he could’ve made (no not the Stills collaborations, which are far from terrible… but the guy was freebasing his way through the studio time).  Anyway… Sharaun’s at volleyball and I’m listening to this amazing record and writing.  Here I go.

I read a story once  (or… did I? ) about a guy who placed a small text-only ad in his local newspaper that said simply:

LAST CHANCE!
 SEND YOUR $3 NOW!
 SUPPLIES LIMITED!  DON’T MISS OUT!

And then supplied a PO Box address.  According to this legend, the man had received upwards of $10,000 in only the couple week’s of the advertisement’s run.

Actually, maybe I invented this story, glimpsed it in my mind’s eye during the fever-dreams the past few nights.  I mean, it’s not on the internet… anyway that I can find (via a totally non-thorough Google search), so maybe it is a creation of my head.  Either way, I think this little piece of lore is a perfect way to start this entry about my “exit strategy” (or lack thereof, or pining for, or creation of).

What is an “exit strategy?”  Well, in the context of today’s blog an exit strategy is that golden idea that’ll catapult me from a working man running the daily rat-race to a young, jet-setting, retiree.  Hey!  You!  Don’t confuse this exit strategy with a “lump sum,” with a windfall, with a lottery bag with three or four dollar signs on it.  That’s not what I’m trying to say.  Sure, money, recompense, clams, that’s a component of an exit strategy I suppose.  But being rich isn’t.  I’m not looking to “get rich,” (I wouldn’t kick rich out of bed, still) no… more like get done… get by… live.  The exit strategy will put me in some happily-coasting phase of life, where the family’s needs are met and we can enjoy each other and enjoy life and – I think most importantly – get me out of a cubicle.

How you gonna do it Dave?!  How ya gonna?  Huh?!

Gather ’round… here it comes: I. Don’t. Know.

Doesn’t matter though, because I finally know where I want to aim.  If you’re a parent today I’m talking Silly Bands or Squinkies.  If you’re my age but don’t have kids yet I’m talking slap bracelets and M.U.S.C.L.E men.  If you’re something like a fine wine I’m talking about the pet rock and those rigid dog collars that make it seem like you’re walking an invisible dog.  Since the dawn of the industrialized age men have been dreaming up stupid little ideas and then sending a set of fabrication specifications to China to get them manufactured out of rubber or plastic or metal so thin it’s stacked atom-by-atom.  Maybe they pay $1 for 500 of their widget, maybe that much for two or three time more (think about the raw cost of a Silly Band).  They then bring ’em over here to the land of the exploitable “everyone’s parents have money to burn” children.

I’m getting on this bandwagon.

Oh, and the end of the “LAST CHANCE” story?  Apparently the man was convicted of mail fraud over his little advertisement. Seems unfair to me, as getting rubes to send in $3 for a promise of nothing isn’t much different than someone paying to see a bearded lady or shrunken head at the midway, but I guess there might be a moral there somewhere.  And, anyway, Sharaun (and my conscience… that too) wouldn’t let me get far with an “exit strategy” that involved dubious ethics.  I’ve got to stick to the straight and narrow and just get it right.

Goodnight.

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both glee and stress

10pm at night and I just finished my last meeting.  Hey, it’s better than before daylight savings time ended and the same meeting was from 10pm-11pm.

Sharaun is out shopping.  Some last-minute preparation for her mom’s group tomorrow morning.  This means that once again it’s up to the music to keep me company.  Presently I’m listening to a 1967 record by the Incredible String Band.  Like I said yesterday, I’ve been on a somewhat erratic, dusty corners of the collection, thing this week.  Cohen is, blessedly, asleep – as is Keaton but that’s not what I want to write about.

He had a rough night tonight; his sleeping pattern seems to be shifting to later and he’s developed a strong sense of object permanence lately which sees him arch his back and screech when Sharaun’s not around.  I can manage him through the trauma, soothing him and letting him focus on my face instead (I’m being serious, get that kid in a staring contest and he’ll pass out while seemingly boring holes into your soul through your eyes).  Sharaun did me a favor and hung out long enough to settle him so he wouldn’t be hollering during my phone call (thus the late-night shopping).

Today at work I was reviewing my staff’s “vacation calendar,” a thing where we visually map out who’ll be gone when so we can easily see where we might need some extra coverage or have a problem with thin staffing.  Looking at it, I realized how very few working days I have between now and when we leave for Florida.  This realization came with both glee and stress, as I’m really ready to be there and hang out with family but I also have a load of things to get done before I can do so with a clear conscience.  I just looked at those blocked out days and marveled at where the year went.

Just a few more weeks and it’ll be over.  All of 2010.  The year of our second kid; of making right with God; of loss and stability and comfort; of too many blessings.

Goodnight.

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as into it as i am cynical about it

Happy Wednesday internet.

I’m sitting here in the living room with this laptop on my lap.  Sharaun’s watching Glee but I’m not.  See, I’ve actually got a pair of headphones on and I’m listening to music.  Yes, this my be the definition of dysfunctional – but Picthfork’s review of Kanye’s new record came out this week and they gave it a perfect 10.0.  I saw it tonight and simply had to listen to the album again to see if, perhaps, I’ve been missing something.  Liking rap is such an uncharacteristic thing for me, I’m almost conflicted when I realize something is good (this is one of my musical weaknesses, like my knowledge of the 1950s or jazz).  I’ll figure it out; dig deep and decide if this is good, bad, or just OK.  A perfect ten?

Today at work I sat through the first day of a three-day intensive training.  We’re sequestered, no contact with work proper.  No e-mail, no cellphone, incommunicado.  This class is supposed to “strengthen” me.  For the first two hours I hated it.  Bloated Utopian concepts delivered in clichéd buzzwords; idealistic tripe requiring a suspension of reality to even discuss; supposed “shifts in thinking” which everyone knows would be buried under waves of reality when they meet the true corporate culture.  I was turned off and pessimistic after the first five minutes of this pep-talk crap.  After lunch I gave things another chance, figuring I had two and a half days left.  Maybe it’s because the afternoon was more rubber meeting road, or maybe it was all about my preconceptions – but I enjoyed things a lot more.  I don’t feel any stronger, though.

We took one of those pseudo-psychology self-defining tests, ala Myers-Briggs.  I tend to love those things, even if they reek of the kind of “they nailed me!” one-size-fits-all “revelations” common to horoscopes and other “well duh” self-help materials.  In the end it spit out five “top themes” for my strengths.  They use made-up corporate words like “ideation” and “empathy.”  It’s such a narcissistic exercise.  Me and all the other managers, reveling in our own strengths, basking in the glow of our own skills, patting ourselves on the back and giving each other under-the-table handjobs in kind.  I can’t believe how good I am!  How well I do these five things!  I’m the maestro of communication; I’m the the high-poobah of woo; I’m a triple black belt in “intellection.”

I’m almost as into it as I am cynical about it.

Goodnight.

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moving

It’s 8 o’clock and Keaton and I are watching an episode of Chip & Dale’s Rescue Rangers.  Yes, that show from when we were kids.  I torrented the whole thing.  Been doing a lot of that, mainly nostalgia but also in response to how incredibly terrible most of the cartoons are today (yes, this coming from an adult – and one who won’t watch anything from Japan or with roots in a trading card game on principle).  She likes cartoons, so it’s an easy way to please us both.

At work I exist in a cubicle.  All day long I work in this little space about twice as big as the water closet in our master bathroom.  I never minded all that much, it’s been that way for ten years now.  Last week, however, while we were in Oregon, our site “decompressed.”  This means that our tiny cubes were expanded into bigger cubes.  I got to see my new decompressed cube for the first time today, and I was impressed.  No longer is my monitor facing directly out into the aisle, no longer does my chair risk hitting the back wall when I push-off from the keyboard, no more do I have to look into the rearview mirror on my monitor to see if someone’s lurking (yes, I really have a rearview mirror on my monitor for this purpose).

Before the decompression, I took an opportunity to “downsize” while packing up my stuff.  Got rid of a ton of crap I’ve collected over the years and ended up with three little boxes of stuff I took to the new cube.  I unpacked those today during a conference call and tried to make the place a little more hospitable.  But with all the new wall space it still looked sparse. That’s when I remembered a cardboard tube in our garage.  In that tube are all my old posters from highschool.  Beatles, Tolkien, Zeppelin, etc.  Now, I’m a little too grown up to pull out most of these… (and in fact don’t really know why I’ve saved them) but I did dig through to find the Beatles’ White Album portraits poster… because I have no shame hanging that.

So I’m the old dude with a Beatles poster in his cube.