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Upon further review, I think it makes more sense to continue going backwards, to look a little longer at the path I traveled to getting fired from my job last Halloween. The career counseling I've undertaken this summer is still in progress (somewhere in an "investigative stage"), and I'll have more to say on the topic as more is revealed to me. Until then, I think it's important to revisit the years since I first started in construction, all the way back to October 1996.
I grew up in a suburb of Boston and graduated in 1995 from Middlebury College (in Vermont) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Literature. I had written poetry, short stories, and a novella during my years as a student there, and seemed to be on track for a career in writing or editing or teaching. The summer after my graduation I started working at Harvard as a publications assistant for the international development institute. So all was good in the world. No problem. My first job in a successful career run that would no doubt land me the editor-in-chief job at the Atlantic Monthly by the time I turned thirty. Yes! Sweet and easy success!
Well that didn't happen. Somewhere along the way I ran into serious issues with my first love (more on that later) and chemical substance abuse (more on that later). I quit my job at Harvard in early December 1995 and started making plans to leave for the West Coast by the end of the year with my friend. I wouldn't return to Massachusetts from California until September 1996, and that gap in time would morph into something more like a Black Hole Monster, terrifying and devouring everything it ran across. Those nine months in the Land of Golden Sunshine would play an extraordinary role in my life; those nine months would be the gestation period leading to the birth of a nine year struggle to adulthood.
But before I get into that whole thing...it's important that I get back to the original point of this entry: how I got into my career in construction.
When I returned from California in the fall of 1996, I had absolutely lost myself and needed to find work that would ground me. Something practical. Something that would teach me the value of a dollar and would provide me with some real-world reward. Days of rummaging through the Boston Globe want ads led me to a $7 per hour job as a laborer and builder's apprentice for a small general contracting firm based in my hometown of Winchester. I had moved back into my childhood home (humbling but necessary), so I could get by on the modest wages. And I also took a job delivering the Boston Globe for some additional income. It was a start. And believe me, I was building a life from the very beginning.
To this day I do not feel very comfortable at the top of a very tall ladder. My legs stiffen and shake, my palms produce sweat like bees produce buzz. So my first attempt at homebuilding was a bit of a false start...I left the company within a couple of weeks because I couldn't summon the courage to paint the tall side of an apartment complex. God bless my boss, Mike. He put up with two of the least productive weeks of painting in the long history of paint. He was supportive. He knew I didn't know the difference between a screwdriver and an extension cord. And he was patient, even at seven bucks an hour. But I was just too scared to stand on the rungs and focus on the clapboards. I just couldn't stop looking down.
So bye bye, Mike. I took a job installing cable TV instead. I figured most living rooms are at ground level.
I quickly learned that installing cable TV sucks, too. O the harassment! Such unrealistic expectations of the cable guy! The bitching, the whining. "Don't track dirt into my house!" "Why don't you offer these channels?!" "Why are you running so late? You ruined my day!"
I had a lot of pent up anger in my life at this point. It had something to do with the way I processed failure as a young man, but I'm certainly not going to get into that right now. At 23 I was driving around town in my fenderless Toyota pickup, chainsmoking cigarettes, walking around with a permanent scowl and exporting some sort of immature rebellion to the local television audience looking to expand their cable lineup. I didn't handle the nitpicking criticisms well and was soon peeling out of driveways, flipping the bird to unsuspecting Cinemax subscribers the town over. Sweet.
So that didn't last long. And soon I was back at Mike's door, begging for my "old" job back, promising to conquer my fear of the third floor. Again, a gracious and good-natured Mike was good enough to take me on again, reassigning me this time to scraping paint off the interior windows and nailing down plywood subfloors. I can only remember breaking the panes of glass and wondering whether I'd ever feel my forearms again. I went home at night needing to be fed my spaghetti.
But my life with Mike lasted for two years, and I learned a boat load about homebuilding. Someday I'll talk more about my relationship with him, which blossomed into an extremely rewarding one, but will stave off the desire for now. What is important to this story is that a few months into my second (and final) stint with Mike, he asked me if I would help him with the accounting. I agreed to pick up QuickBooks and was soon coming over to his home office a couple of times a week to create invoices and process the accounts receivable. It would be a far more meaningful decision than I would have ever guessed at the time, and would be the first step on a road that would eventually bring me to running multimillion dollar residential construction projects. At that time I was just looking to pick up a couple extra bucks. And I was enjoying my life as a builder. I was building houses. That seemed like just about the coolest and most useful thing I could possibly do. And even though I still think it's cool and useful, it was ultimately not what I would want to commit my life to. But I wouldn't really figure that out for another twelve years.
I think I'll take a break for the night. I'll get back to this tomorrow.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Where Am I?
Today, I suppose, is the only place to start. And today, like yesterday, I am asking myself some serious (though almost comical) big-picture questions: Where am I in my life? How did I get here? Where am I going? Since answering these questions in full detail in one post would likely amount to the longest blog entry in the history of the Internet, I think I'll focus on one key area: my work/career. My guess is that some folks might actually connect with some of the things I'm going through right now, and maybe writing down some of my current thoughts will help me as I make a critical transition in my life.
I turned 36 in July, about a month and a half after my wedding to the lovely KC. Last Halloween, as the American economy began to resemble the Titanic in its vertical stretch, my work as a residential construction project manager came to an end. My company, which designed and built high-end custom homes on the Westside of Los Angeles, lost about five of a potential six projects, and ultimately my boss (and good friend) made the right business decision to let me go. It was a blessing in some ways: I'm still not exactly sure how I got this far in a job that I never really liked, and I vowed to start asking some fundamental questions that would redirect me to a truly fulfilling job. It was also pretty sweet that I had no early morning alarm sounds the Monday following Halloween weekend. Double bonus.
At that time KC and I were living in West Hollywood and Santa Monica, respectively, but had already begun to discuss a move to Pasadena to be closer to her family (mom, dad, two sisters, brother, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, two nieces and nephew all live within one square mile). Again, the timing of the break seemed perfect, and KC and I started to make plans for a move to the San Gabriel Valley.
During the months of November and December I engaged in some superficial career counseling, mostly by way of the Idiot's Guide to Finding Your Perfect Career. Sadly, my lack of commitment to the process would only extend my confusion, and it would take another failed career attempt and six long months before I would resolutely embark on an in-depth career search. So although I made some initial strides toward answering those fundamental questions about what work might make me tick, I really only partially asked the right questions. I ended up stepping into the world of personal financial advising, found out fast that I lacked the passion for the work and the entrepreneurial drive needed to sustain it, and fell back into the unemployment line, wondering which steps had been the wrong steps (again). And while I insisted to myself that there is value in knowing what you don't want to do, a constant chattering in the back of my brain addressed the very real possibility that it would take 173 lifetimes to get through every job I didn't want to do before I discovered the one that I did. Ugh.
In my next post I'll discuss the very positive personal discovery process I've undertaken with my career counselor, a process that has required me to look inward and to ask the right questions. It has helped me greatly to understand my personality, my skills, my values, and my life goals. And while I have not yet begun to walk along the path I was born to walk, I can now see in the distance the cobblestones that line it.
I turned 36 in July, about a month and a half after my wedding to the lovely KC. Last Halloween, as the American economy began to resemble the Titanic in its vertical stretch, my work as a residential construction project manager came to an end. My company, which designed and built high-end custom homes on the Westside of Los Angeles, lost about five of a potential six projects, and ultimately my boss (and good friend) made the right business decision to let me go. It was a blessing in some ways: I'm still not exactly sure how I got this far in a job that I never really liked, and I vowed to start asking some fundamental questions that would redirect me to a truly fulfilling job. It was also pretty sweet that I had no early morning alarm sounds the Monday following Halloween weekend. Double bonus.
At that time KC and I were living in West Hollywood and Santa Monica, respectively, but had already begun to discuss a move to Pasadena to be closer to her family (mom, dad, two sisters, brother, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, two nieces and nephew all live within one square mile). Again, the timing of the break seemed perfect, and KC and I started to make plans for a move to the San Gabriel Valley.
During the months of November and December I engaged in some superficial career counseling, mostly by way of the Idiot's Guide to Finding Your Perfect Career. Sadly, my lack of commitment to the process would only extend my confusion, and it would take another failed career attempt and six long months before I would resolutely embark on an in-depth career search. So although I made some initial strides toward answering those fundamental questions about what work might make me tick, I really only partially asked the right questions. I ended up stepping into the world of personal financial advising, found out fast that I lacked the passion for the work and the entrepreneurial drive needed to sustain it, and fell back into the unemployment line, wondering which steps had been the wrong steps (again). And while I insisted to myself that there is value in knowing what you don't want to do, a constant chattering in the back of my brain addressed the very real possibility that it would take 173 lifetimes to get through every job I didn't want to do before I discovered the one that I did. Ugh.
In my next post I'll discuss the very positive personal discovery process I've undertaken with my career counselor, a process that has required me to look inward and to ask the right questions. It has helped me greatly to understand my personality, my skills, my values, and my life goals. And while I have not yet begun to walk along the path I was born to walk, I can now see in the distance the cobblestones that line it.
Labor Day
So it begins. Finally. A day when the American workforce takes its well-earned respite from the workplace, I am going to attempt to start working. I have no idea where this blog will take me, or if I'm able even to carry it on for more than a day. But one must start somewhere, and they say life is about the journey not the destination. So it will start today, here in Pasadena, California, in my little home office, on my old SONY Vaio desktop. Good luck to me.
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the last little necessary push to put finger to keyboard came from a chick flick out now at a theater near you. I am likely to be one of the many hopefuls fueled by the film, Julie & Julia, in which an uninspired customer service representative finds her literary voice through a cooking blog. I, no doubt, am joined by multitudes of aspiring writers who have yet to tap into that inner song; I one of thousands who just might find their deep creative joy by joining the world of everyday e-diarists, spilling their guts online to readers in Nairobi or New Mexico or Neverland. Still, I can't think of a better practice than to launch your thoughts into the ether, connecting, maybe, with the rest of the English-speaking human civilization, and finding friendship or catharsis or lively debate for your innermost emotional workings. Talk about interactive art. Why wait for letters to the editor? Just post your comment and let your author know how utterly useless are his recent musings on the current state of crochet in America. Now we're talking!
My goal is to connect. My passions revolve around the human experience and personal growth: the discovery of our true selves, independent of our fears and families; the webs of friendship we weave that cushion our falls and that are strengthened, each day, by our shared triumphs and tragedies; the disgorgement of yesterday's inner self to make way for our renewed being; the climbing of the rope towards God, however you may define that sublime power, to become the best we can be, in this life and the next.
This blog might get a little heavy if I keep talking like that, though. So I'll concentrate on my other passions and hope we find some deeper meaning in things like baseball, barbecues, beer, architecture, literature, television, film, and crossword puzzles. And perhaps some occasional musings on marriage, work, family, church, community and other things clearly less important than sports and food.
Because that's what a diary is, no? One man's perspective on the world at-large, take it or leave it, written down for his own sanity because he can't keep it in any longer and feels the absolute need to share it with his brothers and sisters. And ultimately it won't matter in a hundred thousand years how many people read it and liked it, or read it and hated it, or never read it at all. As with all things these words and thoughts belong only to God, the keeper of time and space, and will amount only to one tiny step, one single brick in the building of the universe. But the truly beautiful thing is, without each one of our lives, our thoughts, our words, either read or ignored by humankind, the entire cosmic skyscraper would collapse. That's how absolutely crucial we all must be, and why I feel so anxious to put mine down on e-paper.
So it begins.
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the last little necessary push to put finger to keyboard came from a chick flick out now at a theater near you. I am likely to be one of the many hopefuls fueled by the film, Julie & Julia, in which an uninspired customer service representative finds her literary voice through a cooking blog. I, no doubt, am joined by multitudes of aspiring writers who have yet to tap into that inner song; I one of thousands who just might find their deep creative joy by joining the world of everyday e-diarists, spilling their guts online to readers in Nairobi or New Mexico or Neverland. Still, I can't think of a better practice than to launch your thoughts into the ether, connecting, maybe, with the rest of the English-speaking human civilization, and finding friendship or catharsis or lively debate for your innermost emotional workings. Talk about interactive art. Why wait for letters to the editor? Just post your comment and let your author know how utterly useless are his recent musings on the current state of crochet in America. Now we're talking!
My goal is to connect. My passions revolve around the human experience and personal growth: the discovery of our true selves, independent of our fears and families; the webs of friendship we weave that cushion our falls and that are strengthened, each day, by our shared triumphs and tragedies; the disgorgement of yesterday's inner self to make way for our renewed being; the climbing of the rope towards God, however you may define that sublime power, to become the best we can be, in this life and the next.
This blog might get a little heavy if I keep talking like that, though. So I'll concentrate on my other passions and hope we find some deeper meaning in things like baseball, barbecues, beer, architecture, literature, television, film, and crossword puzzles. And perhaps some occasional musings on marriage, work, family, church, community and other things clearly less important than sports and food.
Because that's what a diary is, no? One man's perspective on the world at-large, take it or leave it, written down for his own sanity because he can't keep it in any longer and feels the absolute need to share it with his brothers and sisters. And ultimately it won't matter in a hundred thousand years how many people read it and liked it, or read it and hated it, or never read it at all. As with all things these words and thoughts belong only to God, the keeper of time and space, and will amount only to one tiny step, one single brick in the building of the universe. But the truly beautiful thing is, without each one of our lives, our thoughts, our words, either read or ignored by humankind, the entire cosmic skyscraper would collapse. That's how absolutely crucial we all must be, and why I feel so anxious to put mine down on e-paper.
So it begins.
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