Every morning when I get up, there are two realities.
The inner reality is right around me. Poppy the Brave almost taking a nap, waiting for the sign we will take her morning walk. walk. A The Cat in his awkward pre-morning "I missed you and all from the night, but I am a little angry and will be until breakfast". The Rabbits, patiently eating away at last night's hay until breakfast. The Guinea pigs, not so patiently waiting for breakfast ("Hey! You! Over there behind the couch where we cannot see you! What are the chances that you can break out food a little early?").
My coffee is warm, the Bible and whatever book I am reading - in this case, The Ladder of Perfection by Walter Hilton (14th Century meditation from England) - on the table. My journal is there as well, ready to record the morning's thoughts; most recently a sort of diatribe about how I am either not using my time effectively or am not focusing the way I should.
The outer reality is right beyond that, not even beyond the walls but as close as the soft unheard click of a power button, reminding me that the world is - at best - unsettled in any number of ways. If I make the same click on my work computer, I can find the same thing - unsettled in any number of ways, questions and comments and concerns and "Where are we?" and "Why is this not done?" almost as prominent as the actual e-mails that contain information.
Of the two worlds, I know where I fit in better. The books and animals are far more of interest to me than almost anything that occurs beyond these four walls and as I am finding, the victories of the outer world are as fleeting as the philosophers and poets of old suggested, even if we ignored them when we were younger (as the young ever do).
And so I sit, think about things, then work to push the soft silent clicks away for a little longer. The quiet sounds of life, the books with their wisdom, the coffee with its steaming warmth, are far more of life than "real life" seems to be.
Every so often, a man has to find out how to get motivated if you keep a job long enough. I ran into that twice at least at the "current" job. There came a time when I had my processes in place, the equipment was tuned and didn't drift appreciably. That made my preventive maintenence trips perfunctory. A few years of that, and it was kind of boring. I volunteered for extra duties, and started doing some work with other equipment types.
ReplyDeleteI understand completely where you are. Some take this as a time to look for a different job. Others just coast along. I can't live with myself just coasting. I have to make headway. Wiring issue in the wetware. I had enough time vested to not want to leave the company, I knew it pretty well and had a good internal customer base. And that's where I found the spark. Supporting my customers. Keeping their equipment functioning such that they didn't have to fight it to do their jobs. With our corporate centralized computer management, it was almost too big a job to keep my people operating. And that really jazzed me. Having people happy to see me because we were working toward the same goal.
I don't know how I'd respond with a remote job that didn't require onsite, face to face. I'm not wired well for that kind of work, I'll wager.
STxAR, it is interesting that you discuss it in the context of work, as that is not precisely what I was thinking of - but it is certainly in the background. The perfunctory parts of my job - the meetings, the minutes, the calls - this can become quite ordinary and sometimes, boring. In my case, it has to be a reminder (had another one today) that what we are doing is actually in the business of attempting to save people's lives, or at least give them more time to live them. Contextualizing our work (as you did) helps us to see the bigger picture.
DeleteHope the fires are under control, TB. Behind, sorry.
ReplyDeleteYou all be safe and God bless
Thanks Linda! Everything seems to be headed in the correct direction - almost 50% contained at this moment.
DeletePraise God for that, TB. :)
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