Hey, everybody! I'm still extant. And also breathing. I quit my last job because they were giving me way too much time to blog, and we can't have that. Seriously, I would sit there in my cube coming up with all kinds of posts that I didn't eventually write. It was making me crazy. I needed to move to a job where I could forget I had this blog, you know, like the rest of the 7 billion+ on earth have done long ago.
My new job is with a major conglomerate that makes the very product that I had spent 20 years mastering as a customer. You could say it was inevitable that I would work here one day, and hey, I just did! I like it here a lot, mostly because I am busy. Very busy. I am reaching the point in my career that I had been hearing about, where there is nobody left in North America who does my kind of work. I'm one of the last ones, and it's kind of lonely. In my cubicle area, there are about 10 nationalities and even more languages. Because I speak the English, and know what sweet tea is, I have to work with the redneckiest Texas down home southern good old blechs, while my colleagues get to fly off to Brazil or Dubai. Works for me. I may get to go back to the Large State Of Alaska in September, but that might be the extent of my travels.
There's a lot of disgruntlement afoot at my new job. A lot of these guys have been around for decades, and they imagine they can do better working for oil companies, which they maybe could, but for whatever reason lack the will or actual skills to make the move. The company has been traded around like a 1978 Manny Sanguillen less-than-vintage baseball card, but it seems to me it has landed in the best possible hands. The veterans here are wary, as I imagine they should be, but based on my experience, this seems like a professional, smart, focused company that knows the business very well and happens to be French, which makes it more difficult to understand and also makes the gun-toting nimrods here have indigestion from a dyspeptic melange of ignorance and xenophobia. I'm cool with it. If they can turn a profit, sell good products, and get us projects to do, I don't really care if they think snails are haute cuisine.
Other than that, my life plods on into advanced middle age. My dreams fall by the wayside almost daily, and others I knew in my youth surpass me almost hourly. I find comfort in small things, like a Mets two-game winning streak. You know, not often, is what I am saying.
My new job is with a major conglomerate that makes the very product that I had spent 20 years mastering as a customer. You could say it was inevitable that I would work here one day, and hey, I just did! I like it here a lot, mostly because I am busy. Very busy. I am reaching the point in my career that I had been hearing about, where there is nobody left in North America who does my kind of work. I'm one of the last ones, and it's kind of lonely. In my cubicle area, there are about 10 nationalities and even more languages. Because I speak the English, and know what sweet tea is, I have to work with the redneckiest Texas down home southern good old blechs, while my colleagues get to fly off to Brazil or Dubai. Works for me. I may get to go back to the Large State Of Alaska in September, but that might be the extent of my travels.
There's a lot of disgruntlement afoot at my new job. A lot of these guys have been around for decades, and they imagine they can do better working for oil companies, which they maybe could, but for whatever reason lack the will or actual skills to make the move. The company has been traded around like a 1978 Manny Sanguillen less-than-vintage baseball card, but it seems to me it has landed in the best possible hands. The veterans here are wary, as I imagine they should be, but based on my experience, this seems like a professional, smart, focused company that knows the business very well and happens to be French, which makes it more difficult to understand and also makes the gun-toting nimrods here have indigestion from a dyspeptic melange of ignorance and xenophobia. I'm cool with it. If they can turn a profit, sell good products, and get us projects to do, I don't really care if they think snails are haute cuisine.
Other than that, my life plods on into advanced middle age. My dreams fall by the wayside almost daily, and others I knew in my youth surpass me almost hourly. I find comfort in small things, like a Mets two-game winning streak. You know, not often, is what I am saying.