One way or another I am nearing the end of my period of unemployment. The next few days will see me commit to either a full-time job in Kansas City or accept an as-yet-to-be-made offer to work 4 days a week from home on a java development project. The former starts in just two weeks on June 28th, the latter in eight days on June 21st.
Friday, Michele and I traveled the 350 miles to Overland Park, a southern suburb of Kansas City, were we expect to reside should I follow through on that job offer. Overland Park is new and spacious, filled with shopping and restaurant offerings. There are also a couple of upscale apartment complexes that offer attached garages. After visiting them and spending an afternoon in the area we both have a good feeling about living there.
It would be a significant change from our home here, but the bitterness at leaving behind our pool, and the acre of ground, the birds and all the greenness will be offset by having a new city to learn and explore. We would also have the excitement of searching for and selecting a new home.
Staying here would also have some bitterness, we’d miss out on having a large metropolitan area at our disposal, but we’d be able to keep our (relatively) quiet corner of the world for a while longer. And we could continue to expand our growing circle of like-minded travelers through life.
We met with the president of my future company, and the man who initially recruited me at the end of our afternoon there. Both were pleasant and agreeable men; we had a nice visit that added to our comfort level. The ride home late that afternoon and into the night was long, tiring, and ultimately satisfying, as we knew we had laid to rest the last of the fears about Kansas City. The two options we have are very different on the surface. Thanks to our willingness to go and fully explore Overland Park we were able to get past the surface tension of moving to a new city. In the day or so that has followed we’ve been able to compare our choices on an emotional level. And we’ve come to realize that going or staying doesn’t impact who we are as individuals, or as a couple.
In his book “Illusions”, Richard Bach says, “There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.” Abruptly losing my contract and needing to find a new job was certainly a worthy problem. Now I can start to see the gift I was really seeking. My faith in myself is growing again, and my trust in the relationship bonds I have with Michele is deeper than ever. The past three months have brought us closer together, and renewed our already abiding love for each other.
I have reaffirmed who I am as a man once again, and I am now ready to reenter the world at large so that the friction of daily life can continue to spur my growth.
Thanks to padawan.info’s preventing image hotlinking article I now have protected to some degree my site’s images.
The process is relatively simple, create a new .htaccess file for your images subfolder (you do have an images subfolder, right?) and paste the following code in it.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?zanshin.net(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png)$ - [F,NC]
I recently heard a definition of faith that works for me. The Reverend William Sloane Coffin puts it this way: Faith is not belief without proof, faith is trust without reservation.
My recent experience losing a contract and searching for a job this spring has certainly tested my trust in the future, and, more deeply, my trust in myself. Not taking the end of my contract personally has been extremely difficult. Regaining the loss of faith in myself has been a struggle. Not getting any substantive offers for the first two months of unemployment certainly didn’t help.
Being unemployed gave me reservations about myself. Not getting any offers for such a long time reenforced those reservations. My crisis of faith was so profound that when I finally received a written offer I questioned it. I doubted that I could really do the job, and I doubted that the job was right for me. Since I hadn’t fully overcome the doubt instilled in me as a result of my contract situation, I couldn’t view this new offer openly and with any degree of faith.
Michele and I have spent a lot of time revisiting the feelings we both have as a result of my job loss. It has been a long, hard process examining the feelings of helplessness, rage, disappointment, and futility. Every day we cycle through periods of hope and expectancy alternated with feelings of despair and loss. Having a job offer that would require uprooting our life and moving wasn’t helping. It was easy to focus our hotter emotions towards this offer, finally after months of no outlet for our feelings we had a target.
Recognizing that I was in no position to fairly evaluate my offer I have tabled it for the past couple of weeks. Time is running out however, I am going to have to accept it or reject it within the next few days. I am finding that my questions about my faith are still with me. The aren’t as powerful as they were two months ago, but I still have doubts and reservations.
I know that no choice in life is ever without risk. You always have to make a leap of faith, sometimes large, sometimes small. Going forward from here will require a sizable leap of faith.
Ah what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to be human. I believe that the Tao, or God, or the Universal Is, has a plan for all of this. My role in each lifetime is to uncover a bit more of the plan and understand it. After many lifetimes I will eventually understand the whole plan. I will understand true love and I will return to the whole that is the Tao/God/Is.
Along the way however are tests and lessons. Some I have chosen for the ability they have to uncover more of the hidden plan. Some are put there for me, not of my choosing, for I do not yet see the whole plan.
The trick is relaxing and letting the current of your life carry you to, and then through the challenges. Fighting the current, trying to alter the path of your life builds karma, and ultimately is futile.
I have been going about my current challenge backwards. I have invested in the future I want, not, perhaps, the future I need. Instead I need to accept where the current is taking me. For in accepting it, embracing it, I will gain another piece of the truth.
I don’t get the movie industry at all. Springfield has 35 movie screens in town, counting the two outdoor ones at the Route 66 Drive-in. Today there are only 15 movie titles being shown on these screens.
Does that mean that there are only 15 movies “out” right now? What are all the other directors, actors, producers, et cetera doing? It has been said that the high cost of seeing a movie is the result of the high cost of making a movie. Tens of millions are spent on movies these days, and admission prices certainly reflect that as they approach $10 here in the rural mid-west.
But I think the cost of having more than twice the number of screens as movies is pushing the price up as well. The local movie chain just completed a year or so ago a new 12 screen multiplex that is only showing TWO movies today. Sure those two, “Shrek II” and “Harry Potter” are popular and will have people at each showing. But limiting yourself only to the audience for those two titles seems to be a poor way to run a profitable business to me.
I used to go see movies in the theater every week, sometimes more than once a week. I loved movies on the big screen. It seemed like there were always several good ones out that I wanted to see. Now during any given week there might be one that I would be willing to see in the theater. However the rudeness of audiences, and the upward spiral of the total cost to see a film, usually has me saying, “Let’s wait for the DVD.”
I just don’t get it.
I want one of these. And two of these. And two or three of this guy. Oh and toss this in just for grins.
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I’ve never read any of the various ‘steps for success’ books that have been in vogue in the past decade or so. That being said, here is the first step for success in my book:
Be Unapologetic For Taking Care of Yourself I freely and openly enter into partnerships that are mutually beneficial, but I will not enter into a relationship that doesn’t take care of me. And I will not apologize or be deferential in establishing the boundary that takes care of me. I am not beholden to any employer or client.
I am an adult and I have total responsibility for my life. The instant I surrender that control in return for a job, or favor, or benefit from some source outside of myself is the instant that I cease being me.
I will always do that which takes care of me. I will take the steps or actions that result in my well-being. I will not void my moral or ethical responsibilities, nor my integrity in the pursuit of self caring. I will be true and loving towards myself first and foremost.
I am here to take care of me, and I will not apologize for meeting that responsibility.
{{ $image := .ResourceGetMatch “fogofwar.jpg” }} yesterday. It was an absolutely compelling look at events from the fire bombing of sixty seven (yes 67) cities in Japan during World War II to Vietnam, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
We need more films like this one that examine the events of our time through the eyes of key participants.
Michele and I have been together since Valentine’s Day 1997. In the intervening seven years we’ve only been apart two nights. And I can count on the fingers of both hands the number of times I’ve been home alone.
It’s funny, when you are single you never really think about being home alone. Sure, you are aware that you live alone, and that there are sometimes lengthy periods of time where you are the only person there in your home. Still, it isn’t something you appreciate until you haven’t had it for a while.
This morning Michele is off taking an employment examination for the State of Illinois. She’ll be gone for several hours. The house is all mine. For the first time in over three years I am home alone. I can do what ever I want. Mind you, I can do what ever I want when she is home, but this is somehow different.
No, I didn’t dance across the living room like Paul on “Mad About You” when Jamie was away for the weekend. And I didn’t fall apart like him either. But I did enjoy the sense of adulthood that comes from being at home alone when you know your loved one will be returning soon. And the anticipation of the sweetness the reunion will bring with it.
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[ first seen at Veerle’s Blog ]
Ten years ago today I was in Germany for the start of a two-week motorcycle tour of the Alps. Sitting in my room trying to stay awake until it was at least 9 PM locally, I turned on the television. Not speaking the language I was more interested in seeing what foreign programming looked like. The first channel I visited was broadcasting a news program.
It was obvious that the announcer was standing on the Normandy beaches. Knowing that it was (then) the 50th anniversary of the D-Day Landings I could intuit what the report was about. However I had the distinct feeling that the report I was seeing, but unable to understand, was different in its content than similar broadcasts from American news programs from the same beaches that evening. For the first time in my life I truly understood that the rest of the world has a vastly different perspective than those of us in America.