Changing Gears

When is it too late to make dramatic career changes? When are you too old to shift so drastically?

I don't know, but at almost 51 years, I'm still thinking about it. I'm weighing options, thinking about the future, and making myself believe that change is still possible. I don't want to die stuck in a rut, which is where I feel I am now. My primary reason for having the job I have now is to provide for my family, but is that all there is?

In most cases, the answer is: yes, that's all there is. Fulfillment, meaning and a sense of accomplishment and success are not things that are guaranteed from our work. That's a shame, too. The fact that we spend so many hours in one place, yet that it cannot mean more than money, is too bad. Yet as these things cannot be guaranteed, they are not totally out of reach.

I'm not necessarily an optimist. I've always seen myself as a realist, which I figure lies in the middle of pessimist and optimist. It means I sometimes give up when the optimist would still be plugging away, but it also means I'm sometimes hard at it when the pessimist is curled up on his couch.

So how do you accomplish great things late in life? Experiencing the best that life has to offer sometimes means leaning way out to grab something, risking a fall from the safety of your perch. Risk. That's the key. Taking risks.

Risk is something that many of us cannot afford when reaching for our dreams. For some of us, too many people depend on us. If I quit my job right now to pursue something else, then my family would suffer along with me. Bills wouldn't get paid. Food wouldn't be on the table. Dreams that cost that much are probably mostly pipe dreams. I need to live in the real world. Living in the real world, I don't feel cheated out of my dreams, but I do often find myself looking into the distance, longing for that far, green country.

Living in a New House

I started keeping a weblog in 2005. It was trending on the web, plus I like to write, so it seemed providential. It started on xanga. Then I became disenchanted with xanga and started one on Blogger. Then I went back to xanga. Now the future of xanga hangs in limbo, plus the only people who read xanga pages anymore are people who post on xanga. Plus, Blogger is the adopted child of Google, and we all know that Google is here to stay. Blogger seemed to be one of those neighborhoods that might not go to slum anytime soon. So here I am again.

I spent a few days researching and moving posts from xanga to wordpress to blogger, which is the circuitous route you have to take to get from xanga to blogger, especially moving 132 posts, which is how many I've accumulated over these years. Not many, but they're all my children.

In moving things to Blogger, I noticed a lot of garbage, too--things I posted that even I don't care about now, so much less so for posterity. I noticed an early trend toward shallow, pointless writing, which I assume all these years hence was because that's what I though keeping a weblog was back then. We all realize that weblogging, for most of us, is an exercise in vanity. Putting our unsolicited thoughts on the WWW--who are we kidding with that? In browsing through these things, I kept only the posts  which seemed to have ongoing merit, no matter how small. Things I might like to read again, things someone else might like to read, things that speak about me, my likes, my desires--these have endured.

Looks like I'm here to stay.

The Back Side of Middle Age

Unless I live to be over 100 (doubtful), I'm on the back side of middle age. As I look around, I don't like the way it looks. I could get used to it, but the neighborhood is not as nice as I thought it would be and is not likely to say the same.

One of the first things you notice as you near and cross the peak is the physical stuff. Things stop working properly. Rust sets in. There are creaks and groans and squeaks. These evidence a lack of maintenance in most cases, but also are things that happen with high mileage. The human body is also like a mattress, getting heavier with age, and the reality is as gross as the analogy. Once again, poor maintenance is the reason.

The work mechanics do on you at this age changes, too. Doors marked "Exit Only" start to accept two-way traffic, something no man looks forward to. It becomes necessary, or so they say, to probe the dark recesses that were formerly mysterious and off-limits. To neglect these explorations is to allow dark trolls and ogres to dwell there. To rout these unwelcome guests, you have to give up some things you would rather hold on to.

The immortality you believed was yours is taken away. You begin to wonder, not if you will die, but how. Will it be the Big C? Heart attack? Something more exotic? I've always hoped for a plane crash of a specific kind. While I'm driving down the highway, it is my hope that a plane crashes into my car and kills me. Quick, mostly painless, and you don't have that minute or so to contemplate pain while the aluminum tube you're in plummets toward terra firma.

For me, this is all an exercise of curiosity. I'm not afraid of dying. Honestly, I probably dread certain types of death. I'd prefer something quick, but that's because I don't want to be sick and ebb away like the tide going out.

It's all academic though, isn't it? We don't choose unless we're cowards and we force the clock to chime before the hour. Also, there's no guarantee that it happens in due time. Though it's thankfully rare enough, many do die before their time.

Yet the back side of middle age isn't all about contemplating your exit. For some, there are regrets. For others, time is spend wondering what you can do with what remains. Yet others just sit back and watch things unfold. I want to be active and proactive, but gravity often works against me. Sitting and watching is so much easier.

Yet in spite of all the unknowns, I know that I don't want to be one of those pale, fat people that spend their waning years wallowing in hedonism. They fill casinos, cruse ships, tour buses, RV parks, golf courses and foreign cities. They believe they've paid their dues, and it's all about fun now. It's about doing what they want to do. They've created their own modern day equivalent of Timothy Leary's "Turn on. Tune in. Drop out."

I don't know what I'll end up doing with my last decades, but I don't want it to be squandered on consumption alone. I still want to be productive. I want to be available for my kids in their adult years and for their kids, too; not sailing the Seven Seas or camping out at an AYCE buffet, gorging on beef-a-ghetti. All I need to do now is get in better shape, then we'll see what happens.

No Regrets

Every day, there are people that die in tragic, unexpected ways. Car wrecks. Random, murderous acts. Sudden heart failure. I live in expectation of this myself. My mother died from a stroke in her sleep. I deal with families on a regular basis that are working through such losses. I often wonder if that will be my lot. If it is, I won't have time to say some things, so I say them here.
I have no regrets.

This doesn't mean I haven't made any mistakes. I've made plenty. However, that's part of living, isn't it? We learn from our mistakes so that we will hopefully end up better from them and not make them again and again.

This also doesn't mean that I wouldn't change things--decisions I've made--if that supernatural opportunity presented itself. They would be small things though, small things that in the grand scheme don't really matter. My college degree. Jobs I would work toward. Time spent learning to play the guitar. Looking over this list seems trite, petty and nit-picky. Small potatoes.
What it does mean is that, on the whole, my life has been an experience I wouldn't want to change. I might rewrite some of the dialogue, but I wouldn't rewrite whole scenes or cut scenes that didn't work out just right.

I married the right woman. She gave me beautiful kids, each of whom have brought unique blessings to my life that are priceless, none of which I would trade for anything else. I've been blessed with many good friends, certainly many more than I deserve. I've had experiences with them that are rich as well.

My life stretches behind me like a fat scrapbook, bulging with snapshots, school photos, awkward family portraits, and mementos of graduations, weddings, and funerals. I leaf through its pages and there are poorly focused snapshots and professionally composed ones side by side. I never come to a section that I wish I could rip out and throw away. Even the darker times are part of my life. They provide contrast, making the rich, saturated colors of the good times seem all the more bright and intense.

This life has not presented me with many opportunities for fame and/or fortune. It's been simple. It's been rather austere, though I have experienced more luxuries that I ever thought possible. Complexity and richness don't fall on the same continuum though. Simplicity can be, and is often very rich, in experiences and most certainly in blessings. The simple things in life often end up being the most profound.

As life stands before me now though, I still have no regrets. God has been good to me. Very good. I thank Him for my life. I thank Him for every part of it. Therefore, if by His design, it ends now, know that I will go into eternity a satisfied man.

A Spiritual Man

In my line of work, I've heard it many times. In discussing a deceased family member, the comment is offered:

 "He was a (very) spiritual man."

Though I never know for sure what this means in every situation, I think I know. Since I'm speculating, allow me the freedom of possibly being wrong. However, I wouldn't say this if I didn't know it to be true in more than a few situations.

What I think it means is that this person believes in God or someone like Him. They believe He exists, possibly that He is Creator, and maybe even that we should regard Him in some way. However, they have decided to come to God on their own terms, not His. They have decided to create a god more in tune with their own likings and to worship it instead.

By referring to someone in such generic terms as "a spiritual person", it usually means that more precise terminology such as "devout Christian" would not accurately describe them. One has to also assume that calling someone a "spiritual person" may also be a stretch, an effort to give someone credit for piety that they most likely did not have to a meaningful degree.

My wife is a quilter, a hobby and pastime that I have always encouraged in her, as I see it to be both creative and useful. My grandmother was a quilter, too, so my family heritage is awash in the quilter culture. My grandmother made two types of quilts. One was a more artistic, planned and patterned quilt. The other was the simply functional quilt in which scraps were sewn together with little thought to pattern and color scheme. In these quilts, the virtue was seen in the quilt's colorfulness. The brighter and more outlandish, the better.

The theology of these "spiritual" people seems to be like these hodgepodge quilts:  a mashed-together series of ideas and beliefs whose only connecting trait is that they appeal to this person. In a discussion of spiritual matters, this person might say, "Well, I believe...", and then insert some belief or another. If you were to press them to defend this belief, you would find them squirming on that classic shifting sand on which such homemade beliefs reside. Their belief system would most likely draw on notions or hearsay, passed down or gleaned from family or the misguided populace at large.

If God is the same yesterday, today and forever--and I believe He is--then this type of "spirituality" will most certainly not please Him. The historic record of the Judeo-Christian God shows Him to be generally intolerant of dissension and unaccepting of deviations from His revealed directions. I like this. I would rather worship a God who means what He says and stands by it.  When the "spiritually-minded" stand before the Good and Righteous Judge, believing in something that is only God-like and is based on whimsy will be no better than believing in nothing at all.

God is a loving and forgiving God, but this doesn't mean that everyone will benefit from His love or forgiveness. We do not deserve His love or forgiveness, yet He offers it to those who come to Him on His terms. He is God, after all, and who are we to dictate terms to Him.

Coming to God on your own terms usually means that you don't want to be subject to Him because you believe He is too harsh, too unloving. In the vacuum that is Biblical disbelief, any contrary belief looks at home. When you see God as only a God of love, not a God capable or willing to dish out judgement or punishment, then that perverse kind of love becomes all-important. Who cares about sin or forgiveness? All we need is love.

If you believe this--that God is only a God of love and He's willing to wink at our sinfulness--then you probably also see anyone that upholds a Biblically-based standard that calls people to turn from sin and seek God's forgiveness--as hateful and unloving. How calling our fellow man to repent and to address our Creator on His terms can be construed as hateful is beyond my understanding. Indifference is the hateful path. Choosing to allow someone to live in ignorance of facts that would impact their eternity is the exact opposite of being loving.

There's an old saying: "If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything." If your faith is a pick-and-choose patchwork quilt of disparate pieces, then that's not faith in the real God. Life is not cafeteria-style, where you can pick and choose what you want to believe and what you want to cast aside. If you think it is, then you are a victim of the ages-old heresy that faith itself matters, not the object of your faith.

Shifting sand is no place to build your house, spiritual person. Build on something solid.

The Failures of a Perfectionist

 I'm a perfectionist. Not an obsessive/compulsive one, but a perfectionist none the less.
Those of us that are perfectionists should know the pitfalls of being this way. We are, after all, surrounded by people who aren't concerned with perfection or even doing their best, and there's nothing we can do about it. However, the worst part about being a perfectionist is that I never do anything perfectly. I am plagued, tormented and haunted by things I've done imperfectly. Decisions I've made that were severely flawed, things I've made that show gross imperfection, and interactions with people that have gone horribly awry: these are the ghosts that swirl around me, trying to get my attention and trying to scare me with their noise.
Thankfully, I'm not afraid of ghosts. They are annoying though and they do succeed in distracting my focus away from where it should be.

Right now, I'm second-guessing a decision I made some 13 years ago. It was a career choice I made in a vacuum of alternatives, which made it seem right at the time. There was not much else to consider at the time, option-wise. Also, the job has done an adequate job of providing for my family for these 13 years, so I suppose it's not a total loss. However, the present has me wondering if this was a good decision for the long run.

I'm tending to believe it is not. I'm thinking it may be time to change course. Best case scenario is that my career of the last 13 years was a good choice at the time, yet I'm at the end of that path and find myself at a fork. Turn left and stay here. Turn right and move into uncharted territory. I can see further down the road to the left. I feel like I know where it's going, and that's what makes me want to turn right. The path to the right is wholly unknown, yet it draws me. I feel that I'm an explorer at heart, and this heart is telling me, "Turn right!".

This troubles me because I'm also looking at the glass as half-empty. I'm thinking about how much of a waste it was. I'm wondering why I didn't do something else 13 years ago--something I might enjoy and be challenged by thirteen or twenty or thirty years later.

I've also discovered that perfectionists have to be careful with their children. There is a tendency to be controlling and to try and mold your children's outcomes to resemble what your outcomes would have been. This is a difficult line to follow. You don't know when your being a helpful teacher or a micro-manager. When you wait for them to ask for help, are you being insensitive or uncaring? Who knows how many times I've erred by omission or co-mission on this one.

Its usually a good idea to temper your perfectionism with reality. Do your best. When your best falls short, know it was your best and move on. Give others the grace to do the same or to disregard perfection altogether.

Perfectionism is a frustrating existence. Yet I want to be right here where I am, aware of my shortcomings and failures. The people I worry about aren't the failures. They at least tried something that led to failure. The ones that trouble me the most are those who don't care about doing their best and who are comfortable in their failure, not seeing anything amiss in falling short so consistently. As a perfectionist, I know I'm not perfect, but I am confident that I do some things right some of the time.

I can live with that.

Thought That Counts

We've all heard the phrase, "It's the thought that counts." This sentiment usually accompanies a gift or action which may or may not have any real value, yet the consideration is supposed to carry the primary value.

I've tried to teach my children what this really means. I've taught them that arbitrarily giving gifts just to relieve an obligation or to perhaps win approval from the recipient is a selfish act, the end result being that we feel better for having given a gift. In this context, little thought is given to the recipient and little thought is given to the gift and its propriety.

In their younger years, one of my girls had a friend. We all remember one occurrence when this friend came over, bearing a gift for my daughter. After giving it to her, she said, "You can have this. I don't want it any more."

I also just read an article about Jessica Alba, bragging about teaching her 4-year-old daughter the benefits of giving to the less fortunate by donating her belongings when she's become tired of them or has outgrown them.

There is also a story I remember about the Bill and Hillary Clinton donating used clothing to either the Salvation Army or Goodwill. In this donation was three pair of used underwear that were valued at $2/pair for the purposes of itemizing the "gift" as a charitable contribution for their 1986 tax return.

"It's the though that counts."

There is nothing inherently noble in giving our cast-offs or giving a small portion out of our abundance. That gift has little value in itself, and if it has any value, that must be determined by someone else. Even when we donate used items to resellers, such as the Salvation Army or Goodwill, the item only has value when someone decides to purchase it from their store. We attribute fictitious value to our cast-offs, thinking ourselves generous and caring for gracing a lesser being with our no-longer-needed or -wanted things. Sure, someone may find this useful, however just because someone digs through a dumpster to find something to eat doesn't mean we've done them a favor by putting it there. When our gifts to others are handed down from a lofty place, it is more insulting and demeaning to the recipient than a gift should be. If we do give these things to others, it should most certainly be from a place of humility, thinking carefully of their feelings and their personhood.

Another lesson I've tried to communicate is that giving in a meaningful way is sacrificial. If I received a $25 gift card from certain friends, it would almost be insulting, as I know that they sacrificed little or nothing to give this amount. There are other friends though for whom a $25 gift would be a real sacrifice and would carry meaning far beyond the amount given.

I've also tried to communicate that gift giving requires thought, not in that you thought to give a gift, but that you thought about what you would give this person. Granted, some are hard to buy for and we often have little ideas about what would make a meaningful gift for them, but we should strive to see that our giving is as meaningful as it can be.

Some friends of mine gave me a pipe for my birthday once. It was purchased at a flea market, so it was used, and it wasn't a necessarily expensive brand, yet they knew I was a collector and they thought about my passions and desires when giving this gift. I enjoyed this gift far more than I would have enjoyed a $50 Target gift card.

Gift cards have become an obligation-filler. Unless it has purpose behind it, i.e., it's to a special store or it is focused on a particular need the recipient has, it is virtually meaningless and serves only to soothe our conscience.

There are other thoughtful ways to show our love for friends and family. Recently, some friends invited us over to their house to celebrate my birthday. This was a very meaningful gift. There weren't any actual gifts exchanged, but there was some yummy brisket and delectable sweets, not to mention that we were able to spend some time with some of our favorite people. Once again, much better than a $50 Target gift card.

So in our gift-giving and in our daily contact with friends and family, let us remember that thoughtfulness counts. Let others see that we think, and that when we do think, its not always about ourselves.