Lifes a Train wreck

Life can be interesting… The roofing company I was working for called and asked if I might be willing to work some evenings and Saturdays, that evening upon returning to the shop my boss told us we could work as many hours as we wanted. The next day he changed it to mandatory Saturdays and nine hour days… I decided on ten hour days, when it rains it pours.

 I turned fifty two yesterday, a feat I never saw coming… having seen most of my childhood friends pass from this world before me. I never expected to be one of those left to attend their funerals.

Life is seldom fair, and for those of us still attending, we know enough to expect change and not always of the good kind. I used to envy those few who had their lives all planned out, at least until I came to the realization that it was just another form of entrapment… what if I spent ten years of my life to become something I hated? Instead I spent twenty stuck in something I had not created….

Have all my choices been god ones? No. Bad ones? No. They were merely choices, some made in haste, some made carefully. Some were spurred on by a whim, some by years of planning. Some turned out alright, some like a disaster, patiently waiting for me to turn my back….

Sadly life is finite, while the list of choices is infinite, as is the possibility of mistakes, misinformation, and down right horrible errors.

If I could have foreseen the future, followed every possible path I might take, would it have mattered? could I have avoided all the potholes of life? Probably not.

If I could change the past, would I? Or like the fiction works in print would I merely make it worse? Sounds like a plot for a movie or three, if only it hadn’t been done so many times before….

I find that I am not cut out to be a non-fictional writer, one constrained to chasing stories of mundane events. I only hope my imagination is up to creating the places and events my conscious mind would rather be, a fictional world of happy endings, one where the bad guy never gets ahead for very long and seldom manages to ruin the world or the people occupying it in the end… maybe.

The real test for a writer is to see if they can persuade others to join in the journey, and make enough money to survive the process! Maybe I can force enough time aside to write in between work and the comatose state of off work. Life just keeps happening, things get in the way, and writing time is scarce. Becoming an author is not an easy thing, not by a long shot, so only time will tell if I can make the transition.

Tom

I thought I really ought to get around to an update here… I started a new job this last week, yup I am five days into my new/old career.

I worked for this company before, about four years ago, but traded up or at least thought I had until the condo crash.

I am back in heating and cooling sheet metal again. Building and installing duct work in whatever job I am on at the moment.

It took a four dollar an hour raise from what I made with them before to lure me back in, but it was also more than I was making in the roofing business! Plus it is much closer to home and the savings in gas is enough to count as another raise….

Now if only our Government can keep from driving small businesses bankrupt I will have a “solid” career for awhile.

It feels good to put what I know back into use again, and exercise my years of experience before they rust away.

Hopefully I can get back to writing again soon, the physical stress of holding a construction based job at 50+ takes its toll, as does leaving for work early and returning at the height of the Florida summer heat and humidity.

At least we are surviving again and the lights are on….

Tom

After working all week, nothing is better than a day spent clearing out, and trimming down the debacle inside of our storage shed!

We want to cut the bills down and one way is to lower the storage shed fee… The only way to do that is to get a smaller one, and the only way to do that is to get rid of some junk.

Junk is the appropriate word here as much of what I am paying for would be much better served in a trash can or a yard sale.

I really didn’t have time to go through it before I moved it 2,000 miles or I may have gotten away with a smaller U-haul trailer the last time. Besides, I had already tossed, or gave away, or sold several semi loads of junk treasures by that time.

 So here I am, after the fact, gleaning through our history and trying to decide what stays, and what goes!

Tom