Month: August 2018

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It’s a new day

IMG 0877Cool and quiet.

Even the dog isn’t snoring. The coffee pot spits and gurgles making that magic wakeup juice.

I pour a cup and go sit for a time on the deck. People around the town are beginning to rise. I can hear distant car engines starting, and the slight hiss of water from the shower at the neighbor’s place.

The Doctor next door must have an early shift today. We keep missing each other. He’s been wanting to have a conversation for a month or so about something but we’re always passing each other.

Well here I am just a couple years shy of 60. Who’d have thought? I figured I’d be dead sometime in my 30s of 40s but apparently I wised up.

I find myself thinking about a lot of things. Where I am, where I’ve been, where I still want to go. Not just in the physical sense of places, but in terms of life. 

Two years ago I joined the company I’m working for with the intention of re-starting my career in SQA. Seemed like a good idea at the time and while the income wasn’t great. It provided income, and the promise of restarting my career and making things better. That promise, as it turns out was a lie. 

I’ve re-evaluated that arrangement and come up short. At my age with little retirement aside from social security, and a mountain of debt. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have any more time to devote to a company that refuses to allow me to make any moves. It’s time to take what I want and stop asking.

10 years, that’s what I’ve got left before I can retire. 10 years to get situated so that I can look forward to something beyond surviving on cat food in my old age. 

Time to get frosty and stop being a nice comfortable doormat.  I’ve tried being nice, I’ve tried being competent and hard working, I’ve tried being honest, & decent. In truth, I’m more comfortable being these things. But that doesn’t mean I can’t become a monster.

Time to try something different.

I’m thinking it’s time to be as Machiavellian as all the rest of the bastards.

I know I can do it better, faster, and with more style than any of the people I currently work for. I’m equally sure that I can match or exceed anyone else in any other company I might choose to work for.

Time to stop being victimized, and instead of walking away… Time to start making victims.

I’ll sleep well at night. Generally speaking, I’ve come to believe most people are pretty damn useless. There are a few people that are worth the air they breathe, but by and large most of the population of this planet are cattle. I don’t fret over eating a steak. I won’t fret over destroying a few careers.

IMG 0876Someone once told me that I use my intellect as a defense. I keep most people at arms length with it. He was right. It was a valid observation, but it occurs to me that I can use that same intellect to go on the offense.

So, today I’m freeing my evil side. No remorse, no conscience, no regrets, no morality.

If someone is too stupid, or too blinded by greed or desire, and are of use to me I’ll happily feed them to the gristmill so long as I rise in power, income, and achieve my goals.

I used to believe that if you worked hard and did the right thing, you’d get ahead by simple merit. That’s not the way our world works anymore, if it ever did. Now it’s about politics, ass kissing, riding coat-tails, then abandoning people who helped you get where you are, when they become liabilities. 

I’m thinking I’m going to make the folks who have victimized me and so many others pay. I’m going to make them regret waking up my evil and it starts today.

I’ll sleep well, knowing I’ve chosen what I want instead of someone else using me to achieve their goals.  Make no mistake, I’ll not only bite the hand that feeds me, I’ll take the entire arm, eat it, and suck the marrow from the bones.

I’ve been the dog chained in the yard, being tormented into becoming vicious. I suppose that today, I’ve broken the chain and I’m going to turn on my tormentors.

If you’re honorable, you’re safe. If you’re a corporate climber leaving a trail of tears in your wake, beware, because I’m coming for you. Tomorrow at work will be fun!

Fair Warning.

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Is this all there is?

I guess most people find themselves asking that question from time to time.

I’ve been asking it a lot lately. I suppose I’m luckier than some in that I’ve got a job and a home. But what I’m doing is so unfulfilling that perhaps I’m asking that question a little bit more than usual these days.

The unspoken part of the question is, “What would your prefer, if not what you have?”

(C) DKendal

That’s the really had part of the question.

What would I like to do in place of what I’m doing? The obvious answer, is being wealthy and not having to work.

Back here on Planet Earth…

We need to work, honestly we need something to keep us busy.

I get that, but shouldn’t something we spend so much time doing at least make us feel good about having done the job?

That’s the problem I’m having. The job I’m in is menial at best. There’s little thought that needs to go into it anymore. The issues can be categorized into really one of 6 or 7 common problems. Everyone describes their problem in the most obtuse manner and at first listen, it sounds very complicated. After you cut away all the bullshit the problems people contact us about always fall into the same 6 or 7 categories.

Hence the problem. Boredom

On a larger scale, beyond just the job I’m not doing a lot of the things that I used to do. Part of that is income related, part of it is friendship related, and part of it is simply that I’m tired.

I had expectations that at this point in my life I’d be winding down and charting my course for retirement.

Whoops!

Guess that plan is shot to hell.

I thought that even if I was heading to retirement I’d at least be doing something that I generally liked doing and if I put off the retirement date a couple of years I’d still be happy doing the job.

What I couldn’t see was the extended unemployment, and finally landing a job at a truly awful place that bores the crap out of me.

Try as I might, finding another job has gotten much harder. I’m wondering if it is due to my age, or if it’s just that California is played out.

Could be a bit of both… or Neither. I don’t have an endless network of friends to bounce those kinds of ideas off of.

What I do know is that it’s getting harder and harder for me to get up, get dressed, and come into this shitty place every morning.

Of course the fear is that “THIS” kind of mind numbing boredom is all there is. God, if that’s true… take me now.

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I do miss the silence

IMG 0865Made it to the mountain this week.

There’s a ton of stuff I should have done, but none of it really pressing.

I looked at the stack of paperwork on my desk and think, “I really should scan this stuff and shred the paper…” but I’m unmotivated. I have no desire to give any time to bureaucracy and documentation that serves other people’s purposes.

I’m tired but at peace. 

No sounds except the wind in the trees, birds and scurrying of small critters in some of the plants, those sounds are probably just lizards going about their lizardy day.

No traffic sounds, car alarms, sirens, or loud people. In short, bliss!

It’s a cooler morning, the sun has just crested the hills to the East and I’m sitting on the deck in a pair of ratty shorts with bed head and a cup of coffee.  The dog is checking out his yard making sure that nothing is amiss.

In just a few hours, it will be down the mountain to the heat, brightness, and chaos of the modern world. Ironic, since I’m participating to some extent in the modern insanity writing his blog. 

IMG 0864The neighbor’s dog is surveying his world from his outpost in his yard. He looks my way, recognizes me and focuses on something else, the king of his domain.

I used to be king, now I’m a slave to a time clock and petty, reactionary managers & supervisors. I don’t know why some people aren’t happy unless everyone else is miserable. For some reason, where I work has concentrated a substantial number of really petty, nasty, people in supervisory positions.

These people seem to go out of their way to make others unhappy and then delight in the ensuing discord.  Ahh, thinking about those people, and their insanity will wait until tomorrow. In its due time.

My phone is upstairs on my desk, having just shown me “Memories”. It was trying to be helpful but it failed. The “Memories” it chose were of my faithful pup who passed last year. It’s a bittersweet series of photos and feels a bit like having a wound reopened. I know in time, it won’t be as jarring at it is today, but I felt a little betrayed by my phone. So it’s sitting face down in a “Time-Out” lest it remind me of something else I don’t want to think about.

IMG 0863I’m just going to sit here a while, letting the cool breeze blow gently across my exposed skin and enjoy the fact that I don’t care too much what the neighbors may think of my sun starved pasty body. My pallor is a function of living life like a vampire.

As white as I am, they’d be blinded if they looked at me anyway. They should thank whatever deities they worship that I’m not completely nude.

This time is mine!

It’s the only time for the next week where there’s not something or someone demanding my immediate, urgent, or mandatory, attention. 

Either I’m getting old, or I’m becoming more antisocial like Riddick. Perhaps it’s just getting old, but so much of what people think is important… Just isn’t. 

Humm, I guess I’ll go get my phone and take a couple of pictures for this post. My phone has been punished enough.  The dog wants his treat and my coffee is empty anyway.

Make some time in your life to just be, it will do you a world of good.