Decisions

Dear J-

It has been a while since I tried writing on the road and I’m pleasantly surprised to discover the keyboard still works, well, at least as well as it ever did which is to say with a sticky ‘o’ key and everything. I’ll give it some more time to warm up, I suppose. Good. Awkward preamble done.

As it turns out maybe this — trying and failing spectacularly at getting the units returned to service — maybe this is the impetus I need to shake off the momentum that’s kept me driving a hundred miles every day to work. We have yet to see what jobs everyone will end up getting but I’m contemplating three choices. There’s a local job as a procurement engineer, doing stuff I did every day for five years and that I’m sure I could do in my sleep. What it has to recommend itself is familiarity and comfort, no need to move, shorter commute, I know I can do that work. I’ve done it. But on the other hand it’s a very substantial drop in pay, especially once the bonus or results-sharing payout is figured in, probably close to 40% and is that going to be enough to keep us in San Diego and not struggling check to check?

Then there’s potential job number two, in the Bay Area. Probably involves some travel. definitely a relocation. There, though, the work is interesting — much more in line with what I’ve been doing for the past year and a half or so. Very technical, too, and that’s something my mind wants. So far no interview and no discussion of salary, but I have good hopes there, so we’ll see I guess.

And also, there’s potential job number three, a cross-country relocation to Charlotte, North Carolina. This is even less certain given that I’ve only just applied, but they called me and asked me to submit a resume, so that’s a good sign, right? But still, Charlotte? Yes, Charlotte, and with lower costs of living and the heat, and the South, there is also the satisfaction of working a pan-industry job, meaning it’s something they’d need if any nuclear plant is working. Anywhere. is that a huge appeal, stability?

That’s the crux of it, I’m afraid. if I had no family I’d have no problems shrugging off a relocation anywhere, anytime. Thus concludes the Southern California adventure. We’ve had a good run. I look at what my dad had — the same job for thirty-five years, and they had to push him out the door — and I know that isn’t going to happen for me, unless I want to switch gears completely or work into my mid-70s. it’s a source of envy and regret, we’ve spent so many years here and we’ve just gotten to sample the joy of its potential: Disneyland, beaches, sunshine. every place has its upsides, though, and part of the joy of relocation (oh yeah, I went there) is is finding those things that work well for you.

And yet I’m not alone in this. Leaving now means pulling figgy out of her current school program — a pretty unique opportunity to learn Mandarin in a public immersion program — with no guarantees that we’d be able to jump into another one in time for this fall. I keep having faith that we will but, y’know, wish in one hand and spit in the other, and you’ll know which one fills up faster. Ultimately I don’t know if that’s the trump card that should cover everything else. It should be. But I’m also not sure if this is a case of work to live, we need something to enable this, what we have, what we need.

Mike

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Hard Spot

Dear J-

As much time as I spend at work you’d think I’d start to get something done, but the truth is I end up getting sucked into meeting after meeting and the paralysis of groupthink starts to set in: well, what if they don’t like the way this is phrased? theVet is driven bonkers by my need to parse words to their final meaning when I’m at home, but it’s all I do at work — write, edit, parse — that it inevitably spills over into the rest of my life. For instance, when we went to buy a new mattress a couple of weeks ago, she insisted on calling it a bed, which sounds like we’re getting a frame and boxspring too; by the time I was done with parsing the difference between mattress and bed, she was ready to tear my hair out.

I suppose that’s the crux of the problem lately; the way that I can no longer keep things neatly compartmentalized between work and home, separated as they are by the long buffer of distance and commute time. I get email at home now, and email prompts me to write a few words or draft a response or … but then again, I often choose to ignore it and set my planes in motion on Pocket Planes instead while at home, hoping to get some kind of a refuge from that time at work, time at work, ticking away like a metronome in my head. Our boss has said that he wants us to wake up at night worried about the issues we have happening, and that much is true, but the worries I have are less technical and more managerial.

Deadlines, when they told us to take the time we need to make sure things are correct. Schedule dates. Legal aspects. Word choices, phrasing, careful summarization to show what you know and only what you know, not implying that you’ve got a speculative bone in your body. I suppose the enforced discipline is good for me, as I would otherwise write what I want off the top of my head with little concern to whether I’m right or not. Because, y’know, I’m always right. Does that even make sense? There is a lot left to do, and no time left to do it wrong, which means that time has become the most limitingly precious commodity once again. Such is the wonder of the world.

Mike

Patterns of Force

Dear J-

Well, it’s with visible relief that I note that Kearny Mesa in San Diego is named not after Dennis Kearney (although what kind of delicious irony would that be)  but Stephen Kearny instead, a general in the Mexican-American War.one of the things that I was never concerned about growing up was the origin of various place names; I’d ride by places like Hangman Creek and Qualchan Golf Course without a thought to what those names meant. There’s all kinds of dubious history out there that soon becomes tradition and therefore involate, unbreakable; this is why I think any smartphone needs to have a wikipedia client installed.

Some time later is the date we seem to live in; we tut and cluck at the mistakes of the past and yet going forward we can’t convince anyone that we’re any better than we were, that we haven’t learned anything. The fascination that I have with history is seeing the patterns of the past echoed in our today, almost as if there is some genetic plan for the human race, our wars and hates predetermined, some long thread of fate spinning away and guiding us into these same paths over and over again.

And yet history itself is a kind of cheat; no one ever thinks to write down what they’re doing, only what they’ve done and there’s no end to the hyperbole that can flow from your own pen; I know I’ve been guilty of it which is why I scrupulously downplay everything in my resume in an effort to avoid that, swinging perhaps too far to modesty (which itself sounds especially immodest, sorry). Are we busy closing the gaps in our experience or learning that there’s an infinite land of possibilities ahead, driving us somewhat crazy with the sheer potential of everything? We only have two eyes, and it’s hard to be mindful of the past, looking for the future, and cautious of the present all at once.

Mike

Catch Up

Dear J-

There are a thousand loose ends to wrap up before Friday afternoon and only a few hours left to get them done. My plan is to bring along a laptop along with company access to email to try to get things done on the road; whether or not that happens or indeed if I even have the inclination to keep working after a full day of training will be another matter entirely. I had hoped to make a clean break between work and travel, but when you’re traveling for work with unresolved projects then there’s a lot that they’ll ask while you’re out. Welcome, telecommuter.

I’m bringing along an ancient IBM X31 with hopefully a not-too-corrupted installation of Arch Linux; with any luck the program will copy over nicely and I can use WINE to run it on the laptop. Otherwise it’s too late to scrounge up a copy of XP and do a clean install. Breathe. The more important things are happening tomorrow night: figgy is ‘graduating’ from pre-K and I need to get home a little earlier if possible, which probably means driving but I may be selfish and do one last bike ride before the four weeks off. Make sure the batteries are charged and the sound checks out okay; new life, new tools, new world order. Between now and her first day of school just after Labor day I’m going to be gone for a third of that time.

I try to convince myself that it really doesn’t matter, that there’s always be more chances later, but the longer we keep to our strange schedules and commitments, the more they expect. I’ve somehow gotten tangled up with an industry initiative to overhaul a computer model, and improbably, I may be the only one who can run the predecessor program on-site. How did this happen? If all I wanted was to draw a paycheck and breathe I wouldn’t have left my old job. This is exactly what I was asking for, I suppose, and maybe it’s what I deserve. It just feels like I’m always out of breath, though.

Mike

Thank Yous

Dear J-

Over the weekend, I retreat into kind of a shell, news-wise; whether it’s good or bad without the newspaper the external world doesn’t really exist much. I suppose that I don’t exactly follow the news as it is so this can’t really be cited as anything shocking or new, but after having read the newspaper daily for years, now, a year after giving up our subscription, I can hardly be bothered to check the headlines. This is a huge change from even elementary school when as part of our classroom curriculum, we were expected to keep up with current events and civics (ocome to think of it I’m pretty sure that Bilbray is our congressman, but I’d have to double-check to be sure.

In short I’ve become too involved with pursuing my leisure and finding ways to spend money that I’ve sufficiently made myself willfully ignorant of the world outside. Our current events are limited to Hollywood gossip, our fascination with the world becomes the cult of fame and its trappings: who wore what, what do you drive, life a rubbernecking miasma of spectacle and grime. They said before World War I America was focused on isolationism; likewise we refused to (actively participate in the second until attacked; I wonder if there’s some point in my future that will make me pick up the thread of the external world again.

There’s a million ways to reconnect and give back some of the bounty we have in life and the frivolous pursuit of material things brings only a fleeting joy (believe me, I’ve tried). The tools we have are time, not money; patience, not demands; kindness, not cynicism. The world outside gives us back what we give, and no foolin’, it’s an amazing place to be.I’ve been so focused lately on getting my own things in order that I’ve neglected everything else, which is (was, will be) ridiciulous. Thank you for everything I have; I hope to measure my gratitude in deeds not words, though.

Mike

Flight Plan

Dear J-

We found out today that flying with kids us both easier and harder than it looks. It was a surprisingly simple matter of getting to the right places early enough to not be rushed, but then it ended up being a monster task to get them to run all of the itchy feelings out of their system. Still I’m less mystified by the process than before and am reasonably confident that we could make it a little further next time.

Next step: getting them through a long day and then a wedding followed by a reception. I’m surprised by how low the ceiling is on the rental car, though, so if I can make it through tomorrow without concussing myself I think we can do anything.

Mike

Opportunity Inertial Guidance

Dear J-

It’s nice to believe that I’m ahead of a trend here with the portable Bluetooth keyboard but the truth is that I’ve always liked the idea of a full-size keyboard and a small device. This particular keyboard has been flexible enough to outlive two other devices (Palm Treo 650, whose primary faults were no wi-fi and no native blogging client; Nokia N800 which remedied those flaws but didn’t provide an always-connected solution like the phone does) and I’d been eyeing a keyboard like this ever since I had a PDA over ten years ago. Say what you will about onscreen keyboards but for me, typing in the dark is a lot easier with physical keys and all fingers going.

We are by nature creatures of habit; we find comfortable grooves and wear ruts in the ground treading them back and forth. If it works, we say, why change? Comfort becomes an inertia and the stimulus of change becomes onerous, often inadequate to overcome the same old path over and over. Between seventeen and twenty-eight I had nine different addresses (not counting moves within the same boarding house) and for the last eight I’ve had one, which makes it much easier to find me but I find myself burdened with the weight of things and that same inertia.

I’m sometimes convinced that the new job is a bit of a mirage: blink and I’ll be back at the old one, the same desk I had for five years, the same set of issues, the same familiar faces, the same the same the same. Yesterday I spent an hour wandering around the roof of the plant, where all the HVAC equipment is kept. Just to be free enough of responsibilities — however temporary, that is — and able to take an hour finding footpaths and stairways is marvelous luxury that I can’t adequately describe. I can scarcely believe my good fortune and resolve to be as free and portable as possible to avoiding inertia and always seeking new learning opportunities when I can.

Mike

Dream Composition

Dear J-

What do dreams mean to you? Do you ascribe any sort of deeper portent or metaphor t owhere your dreams took you last night? When I was younger and I got enough sleep I used to dream more often but then again I wonder if I just had more to dream about, seeing as how I now have just about as much as I could ever want: family, kids, and three squares a day.No, really; I think it’s the lack of sleep that’s been doing in my dreamsas it feels like years since I’ve had a good, solid sleep that wasn’t marred by some kind of strange exhaustion, whether from staying up too late or getting up to early or the various punctuations that growing kids will add to the situation.

I do miss the dreams, which seemed to have an easy way about them, showing me what could be and what I should have done, perhaps. At the same time I’d wake up and wonder how much of what just happened was real; it’s not clear at all whether it was all just wish fulfillment or merely warnings. I’d wake up some days with a huge sense of loss and regret which would spill over into everything else I did that day, little knowing that the mood controlled by dreams would make the day a self-fulfilling prophecy. Still, though, I wonder what it would be like to go to bed around eight, say, get my eight hours of sleep and start to dream again. I wonder if I could even sleep that long, though, too.

The various experiments in sleep deprivation all seem to point out that folks will become less lucid eventually, and I’m not sure that I can keep up in the sense that eventually I can’t count on being able to sleep on the van every day or my hours aren’t going to change or life as I know it doesn’t come to a screeching halt on Monday, 12 December 2011. As it is I wonder how critical dreams are to keeping us sane; not the goals sort of dreams where we say in our waking lives this is what I want to become, athis is what I want to achieve — I’m talking those full-bleed technicolor movies your mind plays after the rest of your body has gone slack and the brain has the chance to reknit a few loose connections. Those dreams, occasionally inconvenient but always personal, those dreams. Make up a third of our lives and are best seen in misty repose, in broken snatches of song, as fragments we sift and resynthesize when we’re awake and what happens when you run out of ingredients for your conscious life?

Mike

Forward into the Gap

Dear J-

It has been a strange month, one where I would have (should coulda woulda) tried to not let the distractions of work bleed over into what I do and how I do it but that’s life sometimes. The drama of changing jobs is, I hope, over and a negotiated change date of 12 December has been hammered out at levels above me. Meanwhile the exemption to the residency waiver (company policy is that you spend 18 months in your cjurrent position before being eligible to apply for another job) which was an artifical roadblock that was erected (my opinion) as a punitive measure is out of the way and now I should just be hearing back from Human Resources about an actual offer. Eventually. This has not come easy and it’s openled my eyes to the kind of bureaucratic red tape that supervisors have to deal with every day. I’m glad I’m not there.

There’s a lot of things that aren’t necessarily normal in my life right now. Working on Sundays is a struggle to reconcile the feeling of Monday away when there’s no one else around; likewise halving the weekend means making Ssaturday twice as dense and who knows what that’s actually doing for figgy. She has been acting up at home these past few days and I think it has everything to do with provoking a reaction from us: any reaction and any inkling of paying attention is a good thing for her. I think back to when my first real job switched over to a new system and what the long hours meant for the young parents in the crowd. Here I am at less than fifty hours a week and looking forward to a new job that might take me out of the house even more.

Regardless of the guilt there’s little I can do about it at the moment. The hours are seen as virtue by management and cultivating a career at the expense of family has never been the wrong choice at work. Perhaps I’m in the wrong industry altogether. Does it make sense that the young people who have come into our group have all left? I don’t know if it’s more about potential industry growth in the wake of Fukushima Dai-Ichi or the fact that they’ll work you to the bone and ask for more every day of the week. You don’t go to work to be bad at your job but there seems to be no end to the sacrifices demanded.

Mike

Life Balance

Dear J-

Second week of working Sundays (out of how many more?) and the trick for me on Monday is to reset my internal clock to Monday, not the second day of work my body tells me it is. I do it generally by insisting it is so until reality matches my mind. Whether or not it works has yet to be proven but by halving my weekend I’ve also managed to make Sunday night a cranky time for all. This life shouldn’t revolve around work but that’s the gear I need to switch to for a few months until things shake back out and down to normal again. What is normal though? It’s when our minds tell us that everything is back to an even keel again. Balance.

So far working on Sundays has been remarkably pleasant and I’m finding I don’t mind it too much as long as I have enough music to keep me going. The rule of thumb I’ve been following has been roughly one album per task maximum; it keeps me from getting too frustrated with things I know I need to get done and interested in the task at hand as there’s a bit of a deadline to sweat. Last week I found myself bogged down in one particularly complex assignment and that didn’t help my concentration towards the end. So again it’s about balance and making sure what I do matches what needs to be done.

The big regret is not having enough time over the weekends to catch up with family. I suppose that I should be moving closer, meaning less time on the road but that’s all pretty selfish time I have to take naps or write here or get things done that I normally wouldn’t have a chance to finish at home. theVet and I discussed this and truth is that I’m going to work because we could use the money and I don’t mind the sacrifice in time as long as the burden on her doesn’t drive her nuts. There are a lot of ways to live this life and even if the path seems to have taken a particularly dark turn lately I have to keep my eyes on the light ahead and balance my way across the tightrope.

Mike